TALES
OF A
PATHFINDER
A. L. WESTGARD
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
Wheel tracks of the
Author's Motor Car
A. L. WESTGARD
Field Representative, American Automobile Association,
rice-President and Director Transcontinental Highways,
National Highways Association
TALES
OF A
PATHFINDER
BY
A. L. WESTGARD
PRICE ONE DOLLAR AND A HALF
PUBLISHED BY
A. L. WESTGARD
501 FIFTH AVE. NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT 1920
BY A. L. WESTGARD
Published, March 1920
PRESS OF
ANDREW B. GRAHAM CO.
WASHINGTON . D. C-
To ///.y ifz/tf, who has shared with me the
hardships as well as the pleasures of the trail,
ever a cheerful comrade and a trusty adviser.
550GGO
Foreword
THE story of the highways is the story of
mankind, whether in a state of barbarism or
of civilization. The movement of primitive
peoples has been by waterways and land-routes
which, following lines of least resistance, often
appropriated the trails made by wild animals.
The movements of civilized men likewise followed
the least resistive lines with the result that the great
railways and the National highways coincide with
the game-trails and the Indian paths of long ago.
The ascent of man has been in direct ratio to the
progress that has been made in the speed, safety,
comfort and convenience of the movement of men
and goods from one place to another.
The wheel is the emblem of human progress.
The supreme evolution of the wheel is the auto-
mobile.
Already six and a half million automobiles are
daily employed in speeding a third of the population
of the United States along their way with the
demand increasing so rapidly that the factories are
unable to meet it.
Every intelligent citizen in the United States
knows that the next big job for America now that
the war is over is to construct road beds as perfectly
adapted to the economic operation thereon of motor
vehicles as the road bed of the railway is adapted
to the use thereon of its rolling stock. The two
and a half million miles of roads in the United
States will be made modern highways as rapidly as
the work can be financed and the men and material
secured for the purpose. The strength of the
States and the counties will be put forth in increas-
ing measure until this result is secured. The
Federal Government has already placed the zero
milestone in Washington to designate the point
from which a system of National highways will
extend clear to the surf-beat of the Pacific and from
lands of snow to lands of sun. The Federal
Government, the States and the Counties are
working out a system of National, State and County
highways, the most important of which will be the
first improved. The creation of such a system of
highways will do more for the welfare and advance-
ment of the people of the United States, more for
the unity, security, development and glory of the
Nation than could possibly be accomplished by a
like expenditure of money and energy in any other
line of endeavor.
If this be true, what is the measure of the debt
of gratitude which the public owes to the apostles
of better roads and to the men who have pioneered
the ways that are now to become the great
National Thoroughfares. Among the latter, chief
indeed of the Pathfinders, is the author of this
volume, A. L. Westgard. The year 1903 saw him
driving his first car on the roads of New York.
Since then he has been the constant explorer of the
ways that lead from east to west, from north to
south, inspecting, mapping, publishing, making men
know and appreciate what a country this is ; urging
the delights of the open road and the life of the
great out doors. Almost all of the more than forty
great highways along lines of latitude and longi-
tude follow the trail of his pathfinding car — or
cars — for he has worn out eighteen cars in this
work. His services in this interest have made him
a benefactor of humanity.
If, as I believe, the most important fact for
Americans is America, the main part in the educa-
tion of an American citizen is to know America.
This book is a direct contribution to this end.
DR. S. M. JOHNSON.
March, 1920.
Roswell, New Mexico,
and Washington, D. C.
By W^ay of Explanation
THE days of the pathfinder of motor-car
routes are about over. With few exceptions
the routes that may become trunk-line high-
ways are already beaten paths of known quality
and future work in connection with routes will
concentrate on improving surface conditions.
It has been contended that the pathfinder's work
of the past has been an important factor in the
development of the good roads movement and
consequently of the automobile and allied indus-
tries, and it is in response to frequent urgings of
my many friends within these industries that this
book was written.
The illustrations are mostly intended to show the
difficulties encountered in motor-car pathfinding of
the past, before the advent in any considerable
measure of the Good Roads movement, largely
founded on the pathfinder's work.
A. L. WESTGARD.
Chapters
PAGE
THE TRUNDLE WHEEL 13
THE DESERT TRAMP 17
OPTIMISM 21
THE Cow AND THE ROUTE BOOK 24
MAROONED 26
A MODERN NOAH'S ARK 30
No GASOLINE — AND YET 33
FRENCHMAN'S STATION 37
FACULTY OF ORIENTATION 41
YUMA BORDER 46
A MORMAN DANCE 47
A MEXICAN WEDDING 48
THE YUMA MUMMY 49
NOTORIOUS 51
THE PADRE'S PROPHESY 55
PESKY PESTS 57
GOOD FELLOWS 60
SALADITO "4
PRICE CANYON 68
PAN, MY PAL 74
CLOSE CONNECTION 79
DEADLY FIGURES 82
THE BLACK RIVER CROSSING 84
JUST FROGS v 89
DIAMONDBACKS
THE TOP OF THE CASCADES 94
IN THE BIGHORNS • • 101
PHOTOGRAPHING THE RED MAN 106
AMERICANS ALL ***
11
PAGE
SOME "HOTELS" 118
LOST — BUT RECOVERED 122
THE UN-NAMED PASS 124
OUR NATIONAL PARKS 128
THE FORAGE STATIONS 133
FOREST FIRES 137
A CLOSE CALL 141
INDIAN SLOUGH 145
THE GOSPEL AND GOOD ROADS 150
KICKING UP THE DUST OF AGES 153
SECTIONAL RIVALRY 159
OUT WEST 166
CONVICT LABOR 169
AT THE GRAND CANYON 173
HAZING THE LORD 175
COLORADO MUTTON 177
THE QUEEN OF THE DESERT 178
QUEEN VICTORIA 181
TICKLING THE CARBURETOR 182
'WARE HANDSHAKING 183
PROSPECTORS 184
SHARP SHOOTING 187
A TOWN'S DISGRACE 189
GATES 192
HISTORIC MARKERS 195
GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS 197
BAD INTENTIONS 199
THE SANDSTORM 201
SNIPING GRINGOES 204
THE PADRE TYPOGRAPHERS 206
TEXAS THE GREAT 208
A TIGHT SQUEEZE 212
APPENDIX 215
12
The Trundle IF he el
WHEN I was a young man, I was employed
by a publishing house engaged in issuing
State, county and city atlases and maps
all over the United States. In the county atlases
the maps covered towns or townships and villages.
The property dimensions along country roads, espe-
cially in the Eastern States, where the section system
of dividing land into units of a mile square did not
prevail, were obtained by the use of the so-called
trundle wheel. This consisted of a large, very light
wooden wheel, with two long handles reaching from
the hub, and by the means of these the contrivance
was pushed along country roads. The diameter of
the wheel was about five feet. The revolutions of
the wheel were measured on an odometer at the
hub, and the circumference in feet multiplied by the
number of revolutions of the wheel would give the
distance covered between points. On the handles
was fastened a plane-table with compass attached,
to get the proper bearings of the road at bends and
turns.
While the trundle wheel may seem a crude con-
trivance it worked with great accuracy, but it was
no lazy man's job to push it along from twenty to
thirty miles a day and work out the bearings, mark
the property lines, their lengths and courses, as well
as the location of the houses along the road, on the
map on the plane-table, besides stopping to get the
name of the owner of each property. I have cov-
ered thousands of miles footing it along country
roads in this manner and this was my initiation into
13
14
THE TRUNDLE WHEEL
pathfinding work. The wide scope of the work also
gave me a rather intimate knowledge of roads and
soil conditions in many widely separated sections of
the country. This knowledge was further amplified
upon the arrival of the pneumatic-tired bicycle,
which, as the railroads did to the canals, superseded
the trundle wheel and relegated it to a historic past.
Then followed the automobile. While in the
early days of motordom as much time was probably
spent under the car tinkering as in the driver's seat,
the trundle wheel in comparison to the modern
automobile is as the prehistoric ruins in our South-
T/ie towering red sandstone rocks in Glen Eyrie, near
Colorado Springs, Colo., assume many grotesque shapes,
as the central pinnacle in this picture, which is appro-
priately called "The Judge"
west compared to modern city skyscrapers. From
the trundle wheel to the bicycle and to the auto-
mobile I used progressively the means at hand and
seem to have grown into pathfinding work. It has
THE TRUNDLE WHEEL
15
been very interesting work too. The preparation
of dependable route maps all over the United States
has in no small measure helped in their development
and the desire to travel over them. The main
routes have by reason of their known quality as first
learned through the medium of the pathfinder's
work become the standardized routes of today. The
travel induced over certain main lines, as a conse-
quence of the work of the pioneer pathfinder, has
in turn caused improvements running into the hun-
dreds of millions of dollars, to be followed by bil-
lions of more dollars as time rolls on. The path-
finder's work, beginning with the trundle wheel,
will thus be seen to have been the very foundation
stone, the very first beginning of the good-roads
movement which now has taken such an impetus
that unquestionably a system of nationally built
and maintained highways will be constructed as a
Many of these picturesque, castellated formations of shale
and clay, border the main route in southern Wyoming
16 THE TRUNDLE WHEEL
framework for the thousands of miles of roads
which will be built by states and counties to sup-
plement them as feeders.
I feel no small pride for having had the privilege
and opportunity to help in the pioneer pathfmding
work which has borne such magnificent fruit.
While I am now counted the veteran of the guild
I am as keenly as ever watching the development
along all the main trunk lines of the country and
doing my humble share in helping to keep up the
interest in sections where lethargy may show too
healthy signs. Incidentally I count the year lost
that I cannot personally inspect the progress of
work on at least two of the standard transconti-
nental lines. Eighteen transcontinental trips and
more than that many between the North and South
boundaries of the United States on rubber tires are
behind me and I am still going.
The Desert Tramp
WE LEFT Yuma one bright morning to in-
spect the route up the Gila Valley, which
is now distinguished beyond that of any
other in the United States, because in spite of its
desert character, it is an important link in four dis-
tinct Transcontinental routes, viz. : the Dixie Over-
land Highway, the Bankhead Highway, the South-
ern National Highway and the Old Spanish Trail,
besides figuring as a link in the Borderland Trail.
However, at the time of our trip here concerned
none of these promotions had been conceived and,
as then there was no bridge across the Gila River
at Antelope Hill, it was necessary to ferry or ford
across the Gila at Dome Station and follow a rather
uncertain desert trail via Castle Dome and Middle
Well, joining the route as now laid out at Las
Palomas. We had expected to reach Aguas
Calientes, where there were primitive accommoda-
tions for travelers, before dark, but owing to very
rough and chucky trail between Yuma and Dome
and some slow going near Middle Well darkness
overtook us before we reached Las Palomas.
As we had no commissary we decided to push on
to Aguas Calientes in spite of the lateness of the
hour. The country was dotted with giant Saguaro
cactus and creosote bushes which took on all sorts
of weird shapes in the glare of our acetylene head-
lights. About ten o'clock it seemed to me that I
saw some moving object far ahead and thought it
was probably a skulking coyote, but as we forged
ahead our headlights picked up a man walking
towards us along the dim path.
17
18 THE DESERT TRAMP
As the spot was miles from any habitation it was
hard to believe one's eyes, as certainly no sane person
would brave this barren and desolate arid country
on a mere hike. That would be gambling with
death in too reckless a fashion. As we drew near
we noticed that the man was weaving sideways or
stumbling ahead like a drunken person. He even-
tually stopped as we were a couple of hundred feet
distant and fell prone on the ground.
On reaching him I jumped off the car and bent
over his prostrate body and only then realized that
here was one of those terrible cases where a human
had almost succumbed to the grasp of the desert.
He was about all in from thirst. Filling a cup
from our canvass water bag I fed water to him a
drop at a time and as he gradually regained
strength had to use physical force to prevent him
from gulping down the entire contents of the cup
at one draught. The wonder of a few drops of the
life-giving fluid!
Very gradually increasing the dose of water ad-
ministered at a few minutes interval he was in an
hour's time able to sit up and eat a few crackers
which were found in our lunch box. He was a
sorry individual indeed, unkempt, blear-eyed, and
very poorly clad. He carried an ordinary empty
beer bottle tied with a string to his waist but had
no bundle of clothing nor anything containing food.
Eventually he was strong enough to give us his
story or at least what was purported to be his story.
Three days previously he had left Las Palomas,
which by the way was only some ten miles distant,
in search of a prospector's camp which he had been
told was only a dozen miles away at the side of a
THE DESERT TRAMP 19
mountain plainly visible from Las Palomas. It
may be well to state here that Las Palomas is not
a settlement but merely a desert trading store cater-
ing to the occasional prospectors who with their
outfits and burros roam over the desert in search
of the El Dorado which is always expected to be
discovered tomorrow. He had failed to locate the
camp and had utterly lost his sense of orientation,
wandering haphazardly about without knowing
where he was headed. He had had nothing to eat
since leaving Las Palomas and only the one pint
bottle of water while his suffering from the daytime
heat of the desert was, if anything, only increased
by the cold of the nights which penetrated his poorly
clad body.
In spite of his terrible experience and narrow
escape from madness and probable death he insisted
if
The sandy trail through the lower Gila Valley desert,
Arizona, can hardly be called a boulevard, in spite of
which motor cars negotiate it "somehow." Some day
there will be a real highway constructed through this
section
20 THE DESERT TRAMP
that he would continue his search for the camp if
we would only fill his bottle with water. Whether
this was an example of foolhardiness or grit, or
possibly fear of civilization with its officers of law I
do not know, but no amount of persuasion on our
part could induce him to abandon his intentions.
After teaching him to find the north star and
indicating the exact direction of Las Palomas we
filled his waterbottle, presented him with our can-
teen full of the precious moisture, and as we cranked
up our car to proceed he snuggled under a creosote
bush for a nap.
Ever since that day I have often wondered if we
saved his life only to have him lose it possibly in
some remote canyon of that wonderfully fascinat-
ing desert country or if he found his camp, helped
to work the riches from the ground and today is
possibly one of those who enjoy the prosperity in
some large city, which his evident education clearly
fitted him to appreciate under happier circumstances.
Optimism
IN TRACING the Midland Trail, now the
Roosevelt National Highway, across the
United States, we passed through Western
Kansas in the month of July during a time of ter-
rible drought. Truly this was a benighted country
that season. First the grasshoppers, or "hoppers"
as the settlers call them, had eaten every green leaf
in the cornfields, which only a week or two pre-
vious had by their fine stand aroused such glowing
hopes of a bounteous harvest, leaving only the bare
stalks and making the fields look as though some
crazy person had raised a crop of beanpoles.
On top of this came one of those dreaded hot
winds out of the north which feels like a blast out
of a furnace and wither all growing things to wilted
shreds in a few days. Then the grasshoppers re-
turned and as there was nothing else left finished
the job by eating the cornstalks, which they had
scorned on their first visit when green vegetation
was plentiful. These insects would fly in swarms
and would soon become plastered on the front of
the radiator of our car in such numbers as to pre-
vent the fan from drawing air through it and neces-
sitated frequent stops to scrape their charred bodies
off with a stick. Besides our windshield had to
have frequent cleaning of the juices of their bat-
tered bodies as we met in head-on collisions. When
one hit us in the face the force of the impact would
cause considerable pain as though we were hit by a
pebble.
As may readily be imagined the appearance of
21
22 OPTIMISM
The prairie schooner, noiv fast disappearing from the
plains country, being superseded by the rapid and prac-
tical modern motor car, was a frequent sight along the
pathfinder's trail a few years ago
the country looked so hopeless and dispiriting as to
make one wonder why anyone had ever had the
temerity and courage to ever settle there or at least
to continue living in a region where fortune could
ordinarily be counted on to favor one with her
smiles only once in five or six years. With these
thoughts in mind I stopped at one of the homesteads
which seemed if possible more afflicted and utterly
barren than the rest.
A man came out on the porch followed by a
woman who, from natural curiosity to know what
the strangers wanted, came to the door to listen to
the conversation. In place of wobegone expression
of despair I was certainly rather taken aback by the
genial good-natured smile which met my greetings,
After a few remarks about the proposed highway I
cautiously offered my sympathy about the hardships
incident on the failure of the crops. Instead of
receiving in return a long tale of woe the farmer
OPTIMISM
23
passed it off as a matter of only passing moment,
maintaining that they were pretty sure to get one
good crop in five and that the one good crop every
fifth year brought larger net returns than five
mediocre crops in the East and he thanked his God
that he was not cramped by too close neighbors —
and in fact he was glad he lived in God's country,
viz. : Western Kansas. An opinion to which his
good wife nodded a smiling agreement.
If there is a more sunny optimist on the face of
this green earth than a West Kansas farmer I would
like to meet him.
All set for the pioneer trip, in 1907, over the now famous
"Ideal Tour" of the New England States
The Cow and the Route Book
THE NEXT year after I laid out the "Ideal
Tour" of New England a general publicity
tour over the route was organized and sev-
eral of the automobile editors of the New York
daily papers were invited to take part in the junket.
There were some twenty cars in the caravan and
everything went well with everybody enjoying the
beautiful country and the good hotels even though
in those early days before the era of paved high-
ways the roads failed to come up to their present
standard of excellence.
At one particularly scenic spot in New Hamp-
shire a stop was made by the roadside in order to
allow everyone the opportunity to enjoy the won-
derful view, and a couple of the newspaper men
strolled along the road a little way. One of these
men was known for his droll sayings and dry wit,
the kind that is uttered without the suspicion of a
smile though it generally brought a roar of appre-
ciation from those that heard his witty words.
A short way down the road these two men noted
a farmer just across the fence struggling to tie a
board in front of a cow's face, a performance that
was difficult in view of the fact that the poor bovine
had no horns to which to fasten the board. The
other newspaper man, not the witty one, was a city-
bred chap and immediately wanted to know from
the farmer why he attempted to practice such
cruelty on his cow, the most useful animal on earth.
In fact he grew quite irate and upbraided the farmer
rather severely. After listening in silence for a
24
THE COW AND THE ROUTE BOOK 25
while to this tirade the farmer informed him that
it was necessary to tie the board in front of the
cow's eyes in order to prevent her from seeing and
thus finding weak spots in the fence through which
to make her way into the neighbor's fields and
damage the crops growing there.
This true and reasonable answer seemed to sat-
isfy the humane newspaperman when our droll wit
pulled one of the route-information books, which
were universally used in those days, out of his pocket
and handing it to the farmer said most seriously:
"The board is cruelty to animals. Tie this to her
neck and if she can find her way anywhere with
that she deserves a feed in your neighbor's field,"
then turned on his heel and without a trace of a
smile returned to the waiting cars.
In the early days of motor route pathfinding New Eng-
land roads were not paved though perfectly adequate for
horse drawn traffic
Marooned
WHILE making the original survey of the
Northwest Trail, later called the National
Parks Highway, we left New York in the
middle of June and arrived at Glendive in the Yel-
lowstone River Valley in Montana with fair speed,
after some rather painful experiences with North
Dakota mosquitoes, as related in another chapter,
and after crossing the Little Missouri river at
Medora, N. D., on the railroad bridge. It will be
remembered that Medora is the little town at the
edge of the "Bad-lands" where Col. Theodore
Roosevelt punched cattle when a young man and
incidentally received the inspiration to write of the
West.
As we proceeded up the Yellowstone Valley,
along the historic path of many a doughty pioneer,
trapper, Indian and soldier we learned of floods in
the upper reaches of the river, caused by the melt-
ing snows of the Rocky Mountains. Having had
a rather hazardous experience in crossing the Pow-
der River, as told elsewhere, we pitched camp one
night at a ranch house, which was located on a knoll
near the lonesome station of Zero. There was
more than irony in that name.
When we awoke next morning we were located
on an island, the knoll being entirely surrounded by
floodwater from the river which flowed nearby.
The rancher assured us that there was no cause
for apprehension as he had had this experience in
June every year of the three years he had lived there
and that the water would subside in a couple of
26
MAROONED 27
days at the most. In the meantime the water was
still rising and our island gradually growing smaller
while the shores seemed to grow more distant
hourly.
However we felt reassured by the rancher's con-
fidence and proceeded to have as good a time as the
circumstances would allow. As our commissary
was practically empty when we reached this locality,
it having been our intention to replenish it at Miles
City, we were dependent on the rancher and his
good wife for meals and we were very hospitably
made to feel that we were welcome to share what-
ever their larder afforded. The continual rising of
the water caused us considerable anxiety and I noted
that the rancher was not altogether easy in his
mind. Near dusk it seemed that the flood had
about reached the peak and though our island by
that time seemed mighty small we retired for the
night with the feeling that it would have grown to
much greater size by morning. In this expectation
we found ourselves disappointed when daylight
revealed about the same condition as the night
before.
All day we watched the flood racing by carrying
trees, logs, sheds and small houses and by night
time there seemed to be no appreciable diminution
in the stage of the water. We had by then become
so used to the idea of being marooned that the
familiarity with the strange and fascinating spec-
tacle of the raging waters, as well as with the pos-
sible danger of our situation, had in some degree
blunted our fears. The following morning the
waters were a trifle higher than the night before,
our island was now not over an acre in extent.
ZS MAROONED
While rating breakfast at the ranch house that
morning I got the impression that it seemed com-
paratively scant in volume and the housewife evi-
denced considerable anxiety while serving us. How-
ever these manifestations were not sufficiently pro-
to leave a lasting remembrance and were
forgotten in the more important business of
watching the flood. On the fourth day the waters
showed only a barely appreciable diminution and
the housewife confessed to being out of flour for
bread, the flood having caught them just as they
were about to lay in a new supply of food of various
kinds, which had in fact reached the railroad sta-
tion but had not yet been hauled home.
The situation now became more serious as there
was no other food available except some chickens
and three or four turkevs. On the seventh dav the
MMM "cnlees3* often hare toft oozy bottoms. The
nj, by *id of * lariat connectina the saddle torn
tie front aide, brought onr car ont of this predica-
ment in a jify
29
rhiribrm were all eaten and how w* did hate
chickens, fried, stewcu or otherwise prepared, by
the time the last was consumed. After the first
turkey things seemed indeed dark, just fowl with-
out potatoes, bread or \mtmtt, became as bad as
the proverbial mule of crrfl war tone ahcn t~hf
fhoiiT m some axmy camps usfcu' between fc**Jj
roasted, stewed or jerked mole days on OH!
To our great relief and ulravuil surprise we had
on the tenth day for breakfast a. dish of dehcioas
white meat a hith f^uKJ CTmJuujy palatahlr afar
the »«urtrth»nrt diet of fowl. Our cariosity was
intense ID know vhjt tt was and whence it camt.
After inmh persuasion the rancher tnfto us he had
been lucky enough to catch a couple of prairie dogs,
which had been driven out of their flooded under-
ground apartment, and wasn't it lucky? Well
maybe it was, but the expression on the fanes of us
three lLasteneis did not seem to uufacafee tnat UPC
appreciated our lock. Especially my wife seemed
to suour an utter lack of appreciation of this
fortune if one could judge fay the wobegone
sion on her fane.
\Ve were marooned on thy* Robinson
island *••*••• days in all, and eventually after
:. *;_ _- -T~_j_:.r- :.: •-- - jj ~ -~ it- -_;:-tiri
in piloting our car into Miles City. And it mar he
believed that bicjd and butter and OOUBC and pie,
— ~. — t r. t" r. > . rr. ^ ~. ^ r t r * 1 1 1 i r_"tr ~i,*~7"i __»-t
the manna and ambrosia of the Gods. And then
to top it all off — a pipe of blissful smoke. Ourihm.
offered in any style whatsoever, had no
for us for several rears after.
A Modern Noah's Ark
ON ONE occasion while inspecting the route
which later became the famous River-to-
River road across Iowa, we failed on
account of slow and heavy going, to reach the town
where we had planned to spend the night, and as
my car always, even nowadays when en route, car-
ries a camping outfit, we pulled into a school-house
yard to pitch camp for the night. As there usually
is good drinking water, a supply of wood and other
conveniences available in country school-house yards,
they were and are now favorite camping places in
the West and this particular yard was especially
inviting because it was level and smooth and was
carpeted with a thick even crop of grass.
After having erected the tent and sitting down
to our supper a boy came riding into the yard, made
a tour of inspection and disappeared down the road
at a lively gallop.
Shortly he reappeared accompanied by a team
hauling an immense wagon built like a house, with
doors and curtained windows and painted gaily like
a gypsie wagon, also by another smaller wagon be-
hind which a cow was tied with a short rope. This
caravan pulled into the yard and stopped a few
feet from our camp. Shortly the most wonderful
collection of animate things appeared. Besides the
four horses and the cow there came from those
wagons two hogs, two goats, four geese, three
ducks, a half dozen chickens, six dogs of various
sizes and breeds, a cat, a monkey and a parrot, in
fact the wagon proved a veritable Noah's Ark.
30
A MODERN NOAH'S ARK 31
After stretching their cramped limbs these various
species of the animal kingdom proceeded to inspect
the premises and showed a special fondness for in-
specting our camp and its equipment. The boss of
this outfit was a tremendous giant of a woman who
assured us that her animals were merely curious
and asked us not to mind them, which advice was
easier to give than to follow. The squawk of ducks,
hissing of geese, crowing of cocks, grunting of hogs,
barking of dogs and chattering of the parrot and
the monkey furnished a veritable bedlam of noises
while the woman, her male hired hand and the boy
proceeded to milk the cow and the goats, attend to
the horses and get their camp ready.
Everything was done with dispatch as each had
his particular task to perform, and in an hour's time
everything was properly tucked away for the night,
even the animals seemed to know by long training,
exactly what was expected of them.
On the dirt roads of the Middle West prairie States it
is a wise precaution to use Weed chains on front and rear
iv/ieels iv/ien the roads are <wet
32 A VODOtX XOAH "$ AKK
••e the tine for a veat <nrr the
sallrd « the West a ~drifter
betwren the AIleghemes
No Gasoline— and Yet
ON MY first trip into the Apache country I
had been assured that if I could only reach
Springerville, gasoline would undoubtedly
he found at that settlement. We left McCarthy sta-
tion on the Santa Fe railroad and cut across country
on faint trails meandering across mountains, be-
tween lava beds and cliffs, using mountain peaks as
guiding landmarks, and finallv after ninetv mTif
of the roughest kind of going, unfit for wagons, lei
alone motor cars, made Nations" Ranch with lie
gasoline tank almost empty and with more than
forty miles yet to go to Springerville, As luck;
would have it a few gallons of the precious fond
weir found at the ranch, where it had been kept
for a pumping engine and this enabled us to mdk
Springerville, My motor car, or "outr"
local people called it. was the first ever seen in tins
Mormon settlement, located so far from a railroad-
Mr. Becker, the local merchant, who was later
destined to become tie greatest power f ; :
Good-Roads movement in Eastern Arizona, thought
1 would surely be able to procure gasoline at Fort
Apache, sixty miles further in tie heart of the wild
and exceedingly rough country of tie Mogollon and
White Mountains. As no motor car had ever fce-
fore visited tie region, it seemed foolhardy, I was
told, to attempt to reach tie army post over lie
execrable trafls across tie volcanic plateau of tie
White Mountains, over nine thousand feet high,
Howcvcr, if I dared to undertake it tie merchant
willing to give me the gasoline contained in the
13
34 XO GASOLIXE AND YET
J: wuarf m. plate at tke rufffd caumtrj »f Colorado mmd
-V«= Mfxica, tskfre *»*z the tourinf motorist fads v:ell
comstncttd kijkcAjs, tke pitkfadtr scuffled mp mmr-
rwc dffUs, suep mmd wkj
store4amps, the only supply in the settlement. This
scant supply coupled with the stories about the
country ahead did not promise well, but neverthe-
less we started out. The ascent of the mountains
proved exceedingly arduous and so slow that we
were overtaken by darkness and worse yet by a
blizzard (it was in November) by the time we
reached half way across the plateau. More than
half frozen after a tough tussle with snowdrifts,
cold blasts, buried lava boulders and lost trail, we
arrived towards dawn at Cooler's Ranch, forty-two
miles out. the only house on the way.
After being thawed out and having partaken of
a substantial breakfast we finally arrived at Fort
Apache and found unbounded hospitality but no
gasoline. Here was a serious situation. At the
time there was only a small troop of cavalry with
XO GASOOXZ ASTD YET 35
three officers al the post and these three were TMT
glad to see somebody from "the outside.*" especially
if that somebody would makf a fourth hand at
whist. Chatting about die gasoline situation be-
tween deals I was offered afl sons of sympathy, bnt
as this would not move motor cars it seemed there
was nothing to do but sit down and wait lor a team
to go to Holbrook on the railroad for a supply, and
freighters took two weeks for a round trip to that
point.
During the game the captain's "^boy," a Filipino,
came into the room for some uniforms that irere
hangn^ in a closet. He inspected these cairfulhr
and left the room with them. Asking the captain
where the boy was going with the clothes at that
time of night I was answered that he was to remove
Owrs vsms fir fnt off ifcof ever mvtarea 4* enss Mr
9000 n. kifk 'fimteoM ei zhf Wiatf •movmtam. im fir
cptcmtrj, ATOM*. Hidden xmdrr thr smav «acrr
lev* iidfii^i «*if4 immensely rngprrvateA the
»/ the crtam§
36 NO GASOLINE AND YET
some spots from them. Struck by an idea I suddenly
came to life with a new hope and asked to be per-
mitted to talk with the boy. He was called and
was much surprised at my curiosity regarding what
he used for removing the spots. He said he used a
cleaning fluid which he got from the post quarter-
master. In spite of the late hour the quartermaster
was sent for and admitted having four or five gal-
lons of this "cleaning fluid" in stock. Next morn-
ing this very fluid made the engine frisky as a colt
and the contents of the quartermatser's "cleaning
fluid" container enabled me to reach Globe, sixty
miles distant and the incident had become a mere
experience of the trail.
Nowadays gasoline and all sorts of motor car
supplies are procurable at a number of places along
the same route and a good cinder road crosses the
White Mountains plauteau, while thousands of
cars pass through Springerville every season — and
it is only nine years since my first trip into this
region.
Frenchman's Station
ONE moonbright midsummer's evening our
party arrived at Frenchman's Station, lo-
cated in the most arid part of Central
Nevada near the trail that in former days was the
Pony Express route and two generations later be-
came the Lincoln Highway. The station was kept
by a Frenchman who made a living by hauling
water from a spring, twelve miles distant, and sell-
ing it to freighters hauling ore and supplies between
mining camps to the South and the railroad at
Eureka. He also had sleeping accommodations in
one of the two rooms in his cabin and furnished
meals to travelers.
As the hour was late and my wife somewhat tired,
we thought, that rather than take the time to pitch
the tent and prepare camp, we would look over the
accommodations of the station. I was deputized to
examine these and report. I found that the double
iron bedstead in the "guest room" occupied every
inch of space necessitating undressing in the other
room or perform the feat in the bed somewhat in
the manner necessary in a Pullman berth. The
facts were promptly reported back to the car.
Friend wife thought she had better have an in-
dividual peep and after looking the situation over
thought it would do if the host would furnish clean
linen. After 'having this cryptic word explained to
him as meaning clean sheets and pillow cases he
rolled his eyes and sputtered a flow of protestations
assuring us that we need have no worry about the
linen as the people who slept in that bed last were
37
38 FRENCHMAN'S STATION
perfectly clean people, in fact as he put it : "as clean
as Bill Taft." Mr. Taft at that time was our
President.
Eventually we succeeded in inducing the produc-
tion of satisfactory bedding and proceeded out into
the lean-to shed of a kitchen in anticipation of
something to eat. Here my wife discovered a
luscious-looking watermelon partly covered by a wet
cloth to keep it cool and at once made a requisition
on a generous slice. Our host, however, held up
his hands in protest and with many apologies main-
tained that to grant this request would be out of
the question and entirely impossible as he had had
it brought all the way from Reno in anticipation
of the visit of the "great pathfinder" who was ex-
On the Lincoln Highway across Nevada there are several
of these mud flats. When dry they afford excellent going,
but when wet become absolutely impassable for motor
traffic and have caused great hardships and delay to
transcontinental motor tourists. Extensive improvements,
now under way, will make for comfortable travel through
this region
FRENCHMAN'S STATION 39
pected over the route on an inspection trip as stated
in the Reno papers and this was intended as a pleas-
ing surprise to the great man. To encounter a
luscious watermelon in the most arid part of
Nevada, a hundred miles from a railroad, would be
sure to convince him that after all this route had
its advantages and should be advocated as a National
touring boulevard and thus bring lucrative business
to the station.
When my wife asked who this great man was he
produced a copy of a Reno newspaper a few days
old which contained an account of the expected visit
of her husband. The half-tone photograph accom-
panying the article was taken when I wore city
clothes and thus he had not recognized me. We
chose not to enlighten him and enjoyed a fair
meal sans watermelon. Our host in the meantime
volubly set forth his bright prospects of future
profits from travel over the expected boulevard. He
was so earnest and enthusiastic that we did not have
the heart to discourage him.
Now on the door of my car was a small brass
plate on which was engraved my name and official
position. Next morning when I went out to the
car to see if everything was all right, I found the
watermelon on the tonneau floor covered by the wet
cloth but our host was nowhere in sight. In fact
we prepared our own breakfast and only when we
were ready to depart did he come from behind a
nearby small hill and with tears in his eyes uttered
his profound mortification over the fact that he had
not recognized me, and his hopes that I would not
let "this unfortunate demonstration of his absurd
40 FRENCHMAN S STATION
stupidity" influence me against "locating the boule-
vard" past his station.
While the boulevard is still only on the maps this
route has attracted such a share of the transconti-
nental motor traffic that it is safe to assume that
our host is reconciled for the lack of the boulevard
by the increased flow of revenue from the tourist
traffic. At least I hope he is as he was a cheerful,
good old soul, residing alone out there in the barren
and burning desert.
In the Mogollon range of mountains, in Arizona and Nev.
Mexico, mountain lions of great size abound. This hun-
ter, whom the pathfinder encountered in this region, had
a ivaaon load of mountain lion pelts
Faculty of Orientation
WHILE making the pioneer motor survey up
the Yellowstone Valley in Montana, over
what is now the National Parks Highway
and also the Yellowstone Trail, we arrived, after a
hard tussle with flooded river flats, at the little town
of Custer. Here I found that further progress up
the valley was out of the question on account of the
flood, so began investigating the possibility of work-
ing out a way around through the hills to the south.
I was told there was an old trail along the crest of
Pine Ridge, in view some miles to the south, and
that I might be able to find a way up to the crest
of this ridge, though no one seemed to know where
a trail went up or was willing to venture an opinion
as to whether a motor car would be able to attain
the summit up the apparently steep side slopes.
However, to sit still was not on the program, so
we started for the hills with eyes anxiously scanning
them from afar in an effort to discover what might
prove a path or trail of some kind. We drove across
country along sheep trails and across them till we
came to the first foothills without having discovered
any sign of a trail up the slopes. We did find, how-
ever, that the ridge was deeply incised by small
canyons or gashes and after having carefully in-
spected several of these on foot, I thought I saw the
possibility of reaching the top of the ridge by zig-
zagging up the rather sharply inclined side of one
of these canyons. In making our way up through
the gravelly dry bed of the canyon we soon found
that we could not get out of this bed to gain the
41
42 FACULTY OF ORIENTATION
firmer ground of the side hill, in fact we were soon
so firmly imbedded in the loose gravel that we could
move neither forward or backwards, and realized
that it would be the arduous work of many hours to
extricate the car from its position.
Before entering the canyon or "draw" as it is
called in Montana, I had noticed the white canvas
of a sheep-wagon some two or three miles distant
on the rolling foothills. To enlighten the unin-
itiated a sheep-wagon is the home-on-wheels of
a sheep herder. This home is moved from one loca-
tion to another about every two weeks to provide
new grazing grounds for his flock of about two
thousand sheep which he has in charge for the
owner, who may own from ten to sixty of these
sheep-wagons and who brings a team of horses for
moving them from one location to another when
required.
In order to avoid the arduous work of getting the
This situation, encountered in Montana, necessitated the
taking apart and reconstructing the bridge. Laborious
and sloiv but counted as all in the day's work
FACULTY OF ORIENTATION 43
car out I took our driver Heinie out to the edge of
the draw and pointed out to him the location of
the sheep-wagon and asked him to go over there to
see if he could procure the use of a team, caution-
ing him to note well the location of the canyon in
order to find his way back to our car. Now Heinie
had the faculty of losing his way more prominently
developed than anyone I ever met, in fact his bump
of orientation was so dwarfed that he would lose
his way back to the hotel of a city if the garage
were around the corner and thus out of sight of it.
Hence my cautioning him not to miss the particular
canyon in which our car was when he returned from
the sheep-wagon with or without the horses, espe-
cially in view of the fact that the car was down in
a depression and could not be seen unless one came
within a couple of hundred feet of it.
Heinie started out assuring me he would be back
in a jiffy and we could hear his merry whistle grow
fainter as he drew away into the distance. I started
to make a fire to prepare a bit to eat as friend wife
suggested we should have everything ready against
Heinie's return so as to be prepared to move
promptly. This was about two o'clock in the aft-
ernoon. In the course of an hour or a little more I
went out of the draw to look for Heinie, but he
was nowhere in sight. We waited all the long aft-
ernoon and still no Heinie. We were beginning to
get considerably worried about the boy, particularly
when I saw through the field glasses that the sheep-
herder was preparing his supper and that he was
alone at his camp. I fired a couple of shots to
attract Heinie's attention in case he was lost and
roaming over the side of the ridge. As no answer-
44 FACULTY OF ORIENTATION
ing cry resulted we finally prepared our camp for
the night and had a good fire burning, thinking
that the glare of the flames might guide the boy
back.
Next morning at an anxious and hasty breakfast
Heinie was still missing, and the worst was that I
did not think it well to leave my wife alone in camp
in order to go and hunt for the boy, as one of the
Indian sheep-herders might pay our camp a visit.
All the morning I scanned the surrounding country
with the field glasses and finally about two o'clock,
twenty-four hours after his leaving the car, I spied
him afar off coming towards the ridge accompanied
by a man driving a team of horses. Much relieved
I hurried down to the car and reported to my wife
that Heinie was in sight and to help get something
ready for him to eat in case he was hungry. The
meal about ready, I again went up on the slight ele-
vation from where I had seen the party approaching,
but Heinie and his companion had disappeared and
were nowhere in sight nor, in spite of shots fired,
shouts and waving of red blankets, could we dis-
cover any further sign of them for the rest of the
entire day. Another anxious night was spent in
camp and Heinie was still missing the next noon.
However, two hours later he again appeared in the
focus of the field glasses still accompanied by his
friend with the horses, and this time I took no
chances of loosing him again, but ran out to meet
them about a mile from the car.
Poor Heinie had had a hard time of it. When
he reached the sheep-wagon he found it deserted, but
spied another one a mile or so beyond, and here he
found willing folks with a team who was glad to
FACULTY OF ORIENTATION 45
be of help. But alas, when Heinie undertook to act
as guide back to the car he stared in blank amaze-
ment at the ridge. Every canyon and gash looked
alike to him and there were literally hundreds of
them. So they spent forty-eight hours hunting for
the right one, with poor Heinie worried sick. He
was surely a happy boy to get to the wheel of his
beloved car again.
The team yanked us out of our troubles in no
time, and after several attempts in various localities
we finally attained the summit of the ridge. That
was indeed some ride along the hog-back crest of
Pine Ridge, crossing saddles and rifts, and when, by
evening, we finally succeeded in finding a way down
on the other side of the ridge we were a mighty
tired lot in camp that night. Next day we made
Miles City via Harder and found that they were
organizing searching parties to go and look for us
as our departure from Custer three days before had
been promptly chronicled in the city papers and our
arrival that first night had been expected. It was
thought that we had met with an accident in the
hills or that we might have been murdered by
renegades.
Yum a Border
BEFORE the construction of the highway
bridge at Yuma it was nothing unusual for
motorists, who reached the ferry on the
California side after six o'clock P. M., to have to
spend the night in their cars as the ferryman could
not be hired, threatened or otherwise persuaded to
break his rule not to work after hours, no matter
what the hardships to the tourists, who were com-
pelled to sit there in the dark, generally supperless,
too, and watch the blinking arc lights of the city of
Yuma just across the river, and not a wide river at
that.
Having had this experience on two separate occa-
sions, I put the matter up to the city authorities and
the movement for the building of a highway bridge
connecting the convenient bluffs just above the
ferry, already discussed as a possibility of the future,
took on added impetus. Concrete action followed.
By the co-operation of the Federal government
with the States of Arizona and California, the
bridge was built — and the ferryman lost his job as
he fully deserved.
46
A Mormon Dance
ON ONE of my trips from Zuni to Inscrip-
tion Rock our party spent the night at the
small Mormon settlement of Ramah and
that evening were invited to attend a dance at the
place which served as schoolhouse, house of worship
and public meeting house generally. When a fair-
sized crowd had assembled, the fiddler tuned up and
the merry-makings ready to start, the elder, or what-
ever he is called in the Mormon church, arose and
asked everybody to join in prayer. Like many a
deacon of other faiths he proceeded to give the
Lord a lot of information, which he seemed to think
the Supreme Power should know about and finally
asked that evil thoughts be kept from the dancers.
Some of the young men in my party, who had
been introduced generally among the young ladies,
had evidently missed an introduction to two or three
of them and when they asked for a dance were
promptly turned down by these because they were
not properly introduced. A strict observance of the
conventions were demanded even in this isolated and
remote region. The festive occasion was closed
with another long prayer.
47
A Mexican bedding
ENTERING on one occasion an all-Mexican
village in Arizona we were met by a wed-
ding procession. Preceded by two musicians,
one playing a guitar and one a violin, the white-
dressed bride, led by the hand of the groom, came
towards us with measured and stately strides. Fol-
lowing were the relatives of the happy pair, all with
beaming faces and chatting animatedly.
As we drove to one side to make room for the
procession the groom halted its march, came over to
our car and handed me a written invitation to
attend a dance with refreshments that evening at
the house of the bride's father. Presumably this
invitation was extended to all strangers encounted
during the progress of the procession. Surely a con-
vincing proof of the great hospitality of these unlet-
tered simpleminded folk, this extending a friendly
hand of welcome to whoever enter their gates.
A Mexican wedding at Springerville, Ariz. Yes, riglit
here in the United States, not in a remote corner of
some foreign country
48
The Yuma Mummy
A I A proof of the dryness of the desert air
I will relate an experience I encountered in
Yuma, even though the joke, somewhat
ghastly, was on myself.
One of the chief boosters for creating motor
tourist traffic to and through the town was the city
undertaker. The president of the local automobile
club escorted me over to the undertaking establish-
ment to introduce me, and finding no one in attend-
ance in the office left me there, with an apology, to
go in search of the proprietor. I sat down in a
chair, and after idly glancing through a magazine
which told all about coffins and shrouds, I looked
up and my eyes saw reflected in a mirror on the
opposite wall, a man standing in the corner of the
room behind my chair. And if a face could ever
portray the definition of a diabolical grin this man's
certainly did. To say that I was startled is putting
it mildly. I am afraid I arose from that chair with
a bound, surely with an alacrity frowned upon in
the best social circles where deliberateness is a dis-
tinguishing mark. Facing the man with the grin I
was astounded to note that it was a grin that refused
to come off, it was there for keeps.
Upon closer inspection this ghastly apparition
proved to be a mummified human with long hair
streaming down alongside his sunken face, and
gleaming white teeth glistening brightly. Heavy
eyebrows and some of the tousled hair hid its eye-
sockets. It was fully dressed and standing almost
straight in the corner of the room, leaning only
49
50
THE YUMA MUMMY
one wall. No wonder I was
slightly against
startled.
Upon the arrival of the undertaker I was told
this body had stood there in the corner of the room
for more than a year, and that it was found out on
the desert. The dry air prevented decay and merely
turned the deceased into a mummy. No one seemed
to know anything of the man who met this luckless
fate. It was many a day before I forgot this
experience.
* 2
On top of the White mountains plateau in Arizona. Some
of these small brooks, luhile shallow, has bottoms like
glue. Obtaining traction is most difficult
Notorious
IN 1911 the Glidden Tour was run from New
York to Jacksonville in the month of October.
As I was to start on a route investigation trip
to California near the beginning of October, I did
the pathfinding for the Glidden Tour in the latter
part of August, arriving in Jacksonville the first
week in September.
Owing to pressure of time I travelled fairly fast
for a strictly pathfinding tour, especially when con-
sidering the fact that careful strip maps were made
The road between the capital of the Nation and the
capital of the Confederacy was certainly a tough prop-
osition for a motor car to negotiate up to 1919 when con-
ditions were somewhat improved
51
52
NOTORIOUS
of the route as we went along, besides notes of hotel
accommodations for the big crowd to follow on the
Glidden Tour. This did not give us much time for
the many various entertainments usually attendant
upon a tour of this kind, especially where cities on
two parallel possible routes were bitterly and jeal-
ously contending for the honor of being chosen as a
noon or night stop for the big tour. Many unique
arguments were often brought forth in such cases.
I think that pathfinding as a whole, considering the
delicate task of choosing only one, and that the best
one, of several competitive optional routes without
causing hard feelings or worse, is the best possible
training for a man qualifying for the diplomatic
service.
However, I could not altogether avoid entertain-
ments which were staged to show me honor or to
influence my judgment in the choice of routes as
Only a few years ago Florida "roads" icere something
long to be remembered by those isiho traveled over (or
through) them
NOTORIOUS 53
Of course nobody expected to find real roads through
Florida swamps when we went pathfinding and it may be
truthfully said that we were not disappointed in our
expectations
the case might be. These occasions were usually
attended by more or less speech-making — usually
more. I was frequently presented to the assemblage
in terms most extravagant as the greatest pathfinder
since Daniel Boone and General Fremont. At one
place I was called the "Daniel Boone of the Gaso-
line Age," at another "John the Baptist of the
Good Roads Gospel," or "The Great Pathfinder
of the Good Roads Era," and similar flattering
phrases.
But it remained for the mayor of one of the
smaller Georgia towns to cap the climax. In the
center of the public square was the usual band stand,
and when our car arrived with all its occupants,
grimy from a combination of dust and perspiration,
I was escorted up the steps of the stand, around
which the majority of the citizens of the town were
54 NOTORIOUS
assembled. After the mayor had made some rather
lengthy and not altogether apropos remarks to the
people he told them that they should feel especially
honored that auspicious day in having among them
such a man as myself. Beckoning me to come for-
ward he exclaimed in a voice of thunder, heard all
over the square : "Allow me to present to you, my
fellow citizens, the most notorious tourist of the
age." Just that. Of course the laugh was on me.
If I had not perfected my plans for another trans-
continental trip it would have been my province to
pilot the Glidden Tour over this route. As it was,
my place was taken by one of my co-workers, an
old and dear friend. Near the town where the
mayor referred to me as the notorious, when he
meant the notable tourist, the pilot car, running
along at high speed, was ditched and the man who
took my place as pilot was killed.
The Padre's Prophesy
WHEN on an inspection tour over the
Pacific Highway from Seattle to San Diego
we eventually approached Southern Cali-
fornia, it was late in the year and the Southland
beckoned us with promise of sunshine and good
roads. Having entered upon El Camino Real, the
old Kings Highway, which in early days was only a
trail connecting the twenty-two Franciscan Missions
of California and which now constitutes a link in
the Pacific Highway, it was of course inevitable that
we decided to pay a visit to all the old missions,
most of them now merely ruins, along the way. It
was also of course inevitable that the camera was
used freely to make photographs of the venerable
structures as a means to refresh our memories of
these visits in later years.
Having had the most pleasant experiences all
along the line and securing some splendid snap-
shots, we eventually arrived at the Santa Ynez mis-
sion near Los Olivos. A few years previously this
mission had lost its imposing tower, which had
tumbled down in a storm, owing to erosion of its
material of construction and general old age, so that
the mission bell had been mounted on an unsightly
scaffolding in the open place fronting the chapel
entrance. I proceeded at once to get busy with the
camera and, having taken all the photographs which
I desired, noticed a small placard fastened on the
front of the chapel door.
Upon approaching to read the placard I found to
my consternation that it was a polite request to
55
56 THE PADRE'S PROPHESY
visitors not to make photographs of the mission be-
fore first procuring the permission of the padre. I
felt much mortified in having, though uninten-
tionally, ignored the inhibition, especially as I
noticed that the padre was watching our behavior
from the porch of the mission house, attached to the
chapel building. In order to make my excuses and
set myself right with the padre, I stepped up to
him and tendered apologies for my apparent dis-
regard of his printed request. With a gracious
smile he said it would be all right as he never knew
a photograph which had been taken, without first
securing the requested permission, to turn out any-
thing but a failure.
I assured him, however, that I knew my camera
and also knew that my film was fresh stock, so I
had no fear of the results, but would be happy to
be allowed the privilege of making a contribution to
the church box in partial atonement for my over-
sight. While thanking me for this, he thought that
the photographs hevertheless would turn out bad.
After a few moments pleasant chat we parted the
very best of friends.
When in the cours£ of a few days the trip was
finished, and I had secured photographs of every
one of the missions on the route, the films were
developed. Every exposure made was excellent —
except those made at Santa Ynez. The film was
good, fresh stock, because others on the same roll
came out fine. Thus the padre's prophesy came
true, as the Santa Ynez photographs were so fogged
that it was barely possible to recognize the objects
intended to be depicted.
Pesky Pests
TO travelers beyond the fringe of civilization
it is well known that the further north one
reaches the bigger and more vicious the mos-
quitoes are and, it seems, also more plentiful.
While the damp regions of the tropic and sub-tropic
countries of course have their share of the pests it is
said that the mosquitoes of Alaska and the swampy-
wooded regions of Canada surpass the warmer cli-
mates in the number, the insistent rapaciousness and
venom of these insects which near the dusk of the
evening sweep the country in literally dense clouds
inflicting suffering and often death on animals and
such human beings as are not prepared with veils,
screens and special clothing to resist and render
futile their onslaughts.
However, the sloughs and coulees of our northern
prairie states, such as Minnesota, the Dakotas and
Montana, also furnish excellent breeding places
for a species of mosquito which I believe in genuine
devilishness and ingenuity, undiluted poison and
militant generalship prove worthy matches to their
Canadian and Alaskan cousins and to compare with
which, the well-known and much condemned New
Jersey variety are as tame household pets.
While traversing the North Dakota prairies in
search of the most likely location for a transconti-
nental motor route into the northwest on one occa-
sion we were approaching Bismarck, the state capi-
tal. We were still some twenty miles east of the
city and were pushing on to reach a good dinner
before dark when our trail lead us across a sort of
57
58 PESKY PESTS
dike over several reed-grown swamps or sloughs.
When about half way across this dike, which was
probably a quarter of a mile long, our car skidded
off to one side and barely escaped plunging into the
ooze of the swamp.
As it was we were "stuck." While we were
busily endeavoring to get the car back on to the
crown of the dike it seemed to me that the sun sud-
denly went down and the dusk of evening at once
settled on the surrounding country. Looking up
from the manipulation of the jack handle I saw a
dense black cloud arise out of the slough and
slowly, as though wafted by a breeze, draw nearer
to us. I did not realize the nature of the thing till
untold millions of mosquitoes buzzed around us
and dived for an unprotected spot on our arms,
heads, faces and necks.
As it was absolutely essential to continue with
the work of getting the car going we simply had
to scrape the pests off by the handful whenever we
had a hand free that could be spared for the pur-
pose. When there was no more room for lodge-
ment on the exposed parts of our bodies the insects
would light on our clothing and proceed to bore
until they struck blood.
When after some twenty minutes tussle we
finally succeeded in getting the car under way again
the swarm bloodthirstily pursued us for a while,
but finally gave up the chase. By this time the poi-
son injected into our systems was beginning to have
serious effects. We suffered cruelly and scratched
ourselves until the blood flowed. On approaching
the city I, who seemed to suffer the least, possibly
on account of my being a tobacco smoker, had to
PESKY PKSTS
59
take the wheel from the driver, whose face had
become so swollen from the poison that his eyes
were fast becoming closed by their puffed condition.
They were entirely closed in fact when we drew
up in front of the hotel.
We were compelled to stay in the town for two
days under medical care before we had sufficiently
eradicated the poison from our systems to be able to
proceed. We surely acquired a wholesome respect
for the efficiency of Mr. Mosquito and in the future
were properly supplied with veils and heavy gloves
as at least a partial protection.
// was quite some task to ferry the Canadian River in
Oklahoma. In order to reach the ferry it was necessary
to cover three-fourths of the riverbed's width on your
own wheels across sandbars and shallow water
Good Fellows
WHILE surveying the Meridian Road from
Laredo on the Rio Grande, in Texas, to
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, which high-
way practically divides the United States in two
equal parts, some of the Texans accompanied me in
two cars in order to boost for the improvement of
the route and to extend a hearty welcome for a
winter visit into the Sunny South to the dwellers
of the more northerly states through which we
passed.
Of course our cavalcade was met by delegations
of enthusiasts which came to extend to us the hos-
pitality of whatever community we were approach-
ing along the entire route. These hearty welcomes
compensated in a large measure for the many trying
experiences which we had with rough trails, lack of
culverts, primitive ferries over considerable rivers,
furnace-like hot winds from parching corn and
wheat fields, dust and perspiration. However, it
must be admitted it sometimes added seriously to
our discomfort to travel for several miles through
a dusty country into a town when we were sand-
wiched between many escorting cars in front and
rear, thus compelling us to partake of a dust diet,
blow north or blow south.
It has been my good fortune during my many
years of pathfmding and investigation of routes
throughout the United States to meet many men in
public life. Among these I have had fifty-two gov-
erners of various states ride in my car during periods
extending from only an hour or so up to a two
60
GOOD FELLOWS
61
When it comes to boosting for Good Roads the West
Texas communities easily take first prize. Here is a
little bunch of boosters come out to meet the pathfinder
and escort him into their town
weeks good-road's campaign, and with few excep-
tions I have found these state executives the best of
fellows, clean-minded good sports, as ready to lend
a hand at the shovel to get us out of a bad hole in
the road as to get up on the tonneau seat and make
a speech, and apparently as contented to roll up in
a blanket beside the campfire after a supper of camp
"vittles" as to retire to a sumptous suite of hotel
rooms after an elaborate banquet.
On this trip over the Meridian Road we arrived
at a state line somewhere near halfway of the
route and were met by the governor of the state,
accompanied by a large welcoming delegation in a
long string of automobiles. At the first town we
came to, they had prepared quite a feast for us in
the way of a barbecue lunch, where all the good
things of the season was served in great plentitude
62
GOOD FELLOWS
to everyone present. The governor of course was
the object of special solicitude of a committee which
had been appointed to particularly look after his
comfort. I was seated alongside the governor and
was much amused at the worry displayed by this
committtee when the governor let all the good
things like roast pig, roast turkey and attendant fix-
ings pass by without helping himself. Finally an
immense platter heaped high with steaming golden
roasted ears of corn appeared and the governor took
six of these and piled them on his plate, then calmly
proceeded to eat with apparent relish.
Everybody watched him with great interest as
he busied himself with this repast, which ordinarily
would suffice for three men, and when in silence and
without interruption he had eaten the corn off the
A narroiu escape from sliding down the side of a moun-
tain. The Governor of the State of Colorado, at the
right front wheel, is assisting the pathfinder to keep the
car from going over. The windlass, a homemade con-
trivance, carried in the car, saved the day
GOOD FELLOWS
63
six cobs he said that but for modesty's sake he felt
almost like emulating the Irishman, who after eat-
ing the corn off a cob passed it to the waiter with
the request that the chef "put some more beans on
this stick," to which remark one of those sitting near
enough to hear it suggested that evidently the com-
mittee had brought the governor to the wrong place,
they should have brought him to the livery stable
and not to the barbecue. This caused much merri-
ment and the governor acknowledged the laugh was
on him and confessed to an inordinate fondness for
roasted corn, a fondness which he only dared indulge
to the full when Mrs. Governor was not present to
look after his diet.
// is serious business to stop the momentum of the car
in the sucking quicksand beds of many Neiv Mexico
streams. This picture ivas taken in the Rio Puerco before
the construction of a highway bridge over the treacherous
river
Saladito
WHILE we were taking the first truck across
New Mexico over what was later called
"The Trail to Sunset" but is now part of
the National Old Trails road, we arrived one even-
ing at a long low one-story building, lonesomely
located on the adobe plain between the Datil Moun-
tains and Rito Quemado in the Western part of
Socorro county. As we had had a battle with mud
on the plains all day, the crew was dog tired and
not in a mood for erecting tents and doing the work
attendant upon preparing camp for the night, cook-
ing food, washing dishes, making beds, etc. For
this reason the sight of this lonesome habitation was
very welcome.
We found that the house was not the dwelling
of a family but a sort of Mexican apartment house,
and that its name was Saladito, because it was
located near a small salty spring. Six families occu-
pied the structure. Their respective apartments,
which consisted of two rooms each, were not inter-
communicating which necessitated going outside in
order to enter the apartment of one of the neigh-
bors. I learned that the house, which by the way
was not at all unusual in some remote parts of
New Mexico, was built in this manner in order to
provide better protection against possible danger of
Indian attacks, which in not so far distant days
was ever to be reckoned with and even today was
used as a dwelling place by so many families be-
cause the nearness of fellow human beings was a
great comfort in such a remote region, especially
64
SALADITO
65
This desperate effort to spurt across a stream with quick-
sand bottom was only partially successful as shown by
the illustration below
as the men were away during the day attending
their flocks of Angora goats from which they made
a living.
We were fortunate enough to induce one of the
housewives, who was a childless widow, to take us
in and allow us the use of one of her two rooms
and also to cook our meals for us, using our pro-
visions in their preparation, as none of us had suc-
ceeded in acquiring the taste for Mexican cooking,
usually strongly seasoned with red pepper. While
our supper was being cooked I made a visit down
along the line of the other apartments and found
they contained thirty persons all told, none of whom
could speak or understand a word of English. As
I had a nodding acquaintance with Spanish, I was
able to put us on a friendly basis with the inhabi-
tants and found to my surprise that we occupied a
veritable Noah's Ark. That historic menagerie
66
SALADITO
scarcely contained more species of animals than
Saladito.
Aside from the thirty human beings, of whom
the larger number were children of varying ages, I
was able to enumerate two burros, eight dogs, five
cats, sixteen chickens, nine pigs, one Angora ram
and seven Angora kids, all occupying the rooms in
common and seemingly getting along amicably.
During the night it rained, and as New Mexico
adobe is some problem to negotiate when wet, even
with a light car, let alone a seven-ton truck heavily
loaded, I decided it was good policy to stay where
we were until the country dried up, and thus we
spent two days at Saladito. We had not a dull
moment. The people, their domestic life, their
homes and points of view on ordinary everyday
affairs, were as interesting to us as we were to
them. Besides, we had a well-earned rest, which
Motorists iv/io have had experience <with Neio Mexico
ivet abode soil, all agree that it is the stickiest stuff on
earth
SALADITO 67
put our crew in better trim to tackle the hardships
ahead. As I knew the country from having trav-
ersed it the year before, I realized that these hard-
ships were greater than I dared divulge to the
members of the crew, knowing that they would
attack difficulties, that were not anticipated, with
greater cheerfulness than those about which they
had heard and thus allowed their imagination to
magnify. Of course there were no roads, merely
trails often too narrow for vehicular traffic.
ATHFINDER
AMERICAN AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION
>MI. S4 OFFICE OF PUBLIC BOABS
M tO SfATTlE
•o ro we* YORK
TIES
Price Canyon
I THINK I may justly claim the conception of
the Midland Trail, now called the Roosevelt
National Highway, as I had carefully studied
out its alignment as well as given it a name two
years before I undertook to trace it on the ground.
With the co-operation of the Denver Chamber of
Commerce we crossed the Rocky Mountains over
Berthoud Pass, 11,300 feet high. This pass had
never been crossed by an automobile before. Now
it is done even- day when free from snow. Eventu-
ally we arrived at Grand Junction, near the Colo-
rado-Utah line, and here I found a condition which
gave food for serious thought.
The trip from Grand Junction, a prosperous city
in the heart of a wonderful fruit belt, to Salt Lake
City, three hundred miles distant, had been at-
tempted on several occasions by motorists but had
never been accomplished, the rough country- and
absence of culverts or bridges across washes and
ravines compelling the shipment of the car for a
considerable distance in every case. Upon learning
this and realizing that I should probably also fail
to reach the objective, I arranged for a meeting of
the chamber of commerce. At this meeting I ex-
plained the importance to the city of being located
on a transcontinental trunk highway and especially
on one with so many scenic attractions as the Mid-
land Trail. I then called for volunteers to accom-
pany me to Salt Lake City in their car, suggesting
that three or four husky- fellows occupy each car to
enable us to surmount all obstacles by sheer physical
68
PRICE CAVVOX
Our car VMS the fait to cross Berthvud Pass ever the
Rocky Mountains, vsest of Denver, The devotion, is
11306 feet and the summit of the pass comes very near
beinf the top of the vsorld, beina probably the loftiest
trunk line motor route in the universe
strength, and thus learn the real condition of the
proposed route and arrange for means to eliminate
its drawbacks.
In a few moments crews for ten cars volunteered,
and this speaks volumes for the enterprise and in-
trepidity of these red-blooded folks of the West.
After a day's delay to get ready we started out.
It was ten days before a national election and all
these men expected to be back in their home city
to vote for President. After surmounting almost
inconceivable difficulties, at times carrying cars
bodily across deep ravines or across flooded rivers
and battling with sticky adobe mud caused by two
days' rain, besides having serious breakdowns of
almost every one of the eleven cars, we finally
readied the town of Price.
70
PRICE CANYON
A few miles beyond this place lies Price Canyon,
through which a road once passed, but now the
D. & R. G. Railroad occupied the former bed of
the road, and, as no other trail had been constructed
through the canyon over the sixteen miles from
Helper to Colton, it was necessary for the cars to
travel around through an exceedingly rough coun-
try nearly sixty miles to reach from one of these
stations to the other. As I wanted the route located
through Price Canyon, arrangements were made to
furnish me with a guide for hiking through while
the cars made the long trip around.
This guide was a sorry specimen of humanity
who, as a hanger-on at the town saloons, had
through dissipation become so weakened that by the
time we had gone some nine or ten miles of the
sixteen, was about played out from the exertions
necessary to get over the rough sides of the steep
A sudden cloudburst, occurring frequently miles away,
will make raging torrents of ordinarily dry "washes"
in Utah
PRICE CANYON 71
canyon. Here he sat down on a boulder and en-
treated me to leave him to his fate, as he had all
his days been a worthless good-for-nothing and de-
served no better end, and, anyway, did not care
but would just as soon pass in his checks now as
later. In other words, he had not only lost his
stamina but his courage, and was willing to give up.
After considerable persuasion and coaxing he,
however, consented to make further efforts, and,
with a little assistance now and then, managed to
make, in a slow and stumbling way, another few
miles. Unfortunately we had here a rather grue-
some experience. We saw a decomposed body hang-
ing from a tree, evidently of some unfortunate who
in despair had committed suicide. This entirely
unnerved my companion, and shortly beyond the
place where we had passed the hanging man, sway-
ing back and forth in the wind, he refused entirely
to make any further efforts, and no coaxing nor
even threats had any effect on him. He simply sat
down on the ground and refused to rise or pull
himself together.
Of course I could not leave the poor wretch
there, as it was turning dark and he was too poorly
clad to stand the cold of the night in his alcohol-
soaked condition. There was nothing else to do
but try to carry or drag him along, and this I under-
took to do. While he was a man of slight physique,
he began to weigh very heavily after we had pro-
ceeded a short distance in this manner, especially
as I also am not of very heavy frame, and I was
compelled to make frequent stops for rest. The
last mile into Colton I was no longer able to carry
72 PRICE CANYON
him, but dragged him along, a few feet at a time,
between stops for breath.
When we finally reached the steps of the little
frame building which constituted the hotel, I was
almost as near in as my burden, but the sight of the
cars parked around the building cheered me up
wonderfully. I found my company of scouts dis-
cussing plans to enter the canyon on a search for
us as I opened the door and entered the hotel office.
Unfortunately the little town was dry. I say un-
fortunately, because in this case the specific needed
for my guide was a generous dose of his accustomed
stimulant more than any other remedy. After
searching the town over we finally unearthed a small
bottle of whiskey, and when a tumblerful of the
raw poison was forced down his throat he began
to give signs of life. In an hour's time he seemed
as good as new and with a more rosy view on life —
Getting across Eastern Utah was no play owing to many
narroiv but steep washes. The shovel brigade was gen-
erally kept busy
PRICE CANYON
73
in fact, was not at all disposed toward quitting this
mundane sphere just then nor in the near future.
When our party eventually reached Salt Lake
City we had spent twelve days covering the three
hundred miles from Grand Junction, and it was
with genuine regret that I parted with those fine
fellows, "the boys of 1912."
I had the satisfaction within a year to pilot my
car over a new highway through Price Canyon,
located on the route over which I had made the
preliminary investigation, and on that trip I trav-
eled from Grand Junction to Salt Lake City in two
days, an evidence of the work which had been done
during the year to eliminate the worst places on
this entire route.
Fording this river in Utah <was found a comparatively
easy task, owing to a firm, gravelly bottom
Pan, My Pal
PAN is a blue-blooded aristocrat with a family
tree as old and a pedigree as unblemished as
the proudest and highest in the "tight little
island" where Burke's peerage is the main guide to
"Who is Who." His ancestors had carried their
blue ribbons and bow knots as proudly as any duke
his crown and ermine cloak. Besides, no ermine
cloak could be more white and flawless than the
white coat which Pan wears. Unlike many a scion
of nobility, Pan is true as steel and the best friend
a man could ever have, his unselfishness and devo-
tion is something beautiful and inspiring and his
faithfulness beyond doubt. Pan is a "regular
fellow," smart, active and ever alert.
Pan is a wire-haired fox terrier from the Sabine
Kennels, down in Texas. His sire was transplanted
to the banks of the Sabine from England, after
having won pre-eminent honors at the most impor-
tant bench shows, but now when he wistfully looks
towards the East with homesick longings he only
sees the Louisiana shore on the other side of the
river. Pan is a twin ; his brother is called Peter,
and the pair were named thus in honor of Maud
Adams, who undoubtedly never knew of their ex-
istence, and thus missed a real pleasure.
When I first saw Pan he was romping around
in a grass-carpeted, wire-netted enclosure with
nearly two hundred playfellows, and a wonderfully
bright and lively picture they made. It was my task
that morning to choose from among this kaleido-
scopic jumble of jumping, scampering young dog-
74
PAN, MY PAL 75
flesh an individual which appealed to me the
strongest as most likely to become a boon com-
panion and real comrade on the road. A kindly
fairy guided my judgment and Pan became our pal
on many a transcontinental motor hike. He shares
with us the good and the bad, is patient and wise,
always sleeps with one eye open and an ear ever
cocked, is an apt scholar, proud of what he has
learned, and never did anything deserving chastise-
ment but once — and then he escaped it.
Pan, our pal, laho "knows America," from actual observa-
tion, better than the greater majority of its people
The first day on the road Pan suffered intensely
from sea-sickness, or rather car-sickness, and refused
to be comforte4 and coddled. In all his six months
of existence he had had no such experience, and he
looked at us reproachfully and miserably with his
pleading eyes. However, in a couple of days he
began to take interest in his fellow passenger and
to notice his swiftly changing surroundings. In a
76 PAN, MY PAL
week he acted like a seasoned globe trotter, devel-
oped an enormous appetite and soon began, as we
pulled up at a hotel entrance for a night stop, to
look at the hostelry with a speculative eye, trying
to figure out in advance if any objection would be
offered to his sharing our room with us. We be-
came so fond of the cute little runt that when some
landlord, after reasonable pleadings, remained ada-
mant in his objections to dogs, we would seek some
other hotel or even go to some other town rather
than leave our tiny friend alone in the garage for
the night.
When Pan was a little over a year old he had
traveled far and wide and became as car wise as an
insurance adjuster. At this time we again hap-
pened to visit his native State. Somewhere near
the edge of the Staked Plain, in the Panhandle,
some good-roads enthusiasts presented our driver
with a pair of young opossums, which he kept in
the pocket of one of the front doors of the car,
unknown to me. The little things were only some
five inches long, exclusive of their prehensile tails,
and were quite tame. Pan's continuous interest in
that corner of the car aroused my curiosity and 1
soon, of course, discovered the cause. The black,
bead-like eyes and pig-like snouts of the little pets
did not appeal to our party, but as the driver prom-
ised to ship them to his home when we reached
Colorado, we raised no objection to carrying them
that far. Not so Pan ; he had to be continually
restrained from making a raid on that door pocket.
At Colorado Springs we were the guests of some
friends, and here of course Pan had to make the
best of his quarters in the stable. In the garage,
PAN, MY PAL 77
next door to the stable, the opossums were kept in
a box placed on a shelf. The next morning after
our arrival the driver announced the disappearance
of his pets. He had found the slats covering the
box slightly displaced and the opossums gone. A
rigid search of the premises failed to discover their
whereabouts, but I noticed that Pan tried somewhat
ostentatiously to look unconcerned — in fact, so much
so that my suspicion was aroused.
As we started to leave the stable, apparently
satisfied that the 'possums were not there, I seemed
to note a smug look of satisfaction on Pan's face
and determined to return shortly. After a lapse
of an hour I came back stealthily and, upon jerking
the door suddenly open, found the little rascal play-
ing with a 'possum tail as a kitten with a ball of
twine. He knew that he had been caught red-
handed and ran to a corner, whining for mercy.
That was the time he deserved corporal punishment
but didn't get it. It was not in my heart to give
him anything stronger than a round scolding in
appreciation of his cunning in hiding the remains of
his victims from our view when we first inspected
the stable. The 'possums had escaped from their
box and, prowling around, had gone through a drain
into the stable and here met their end.
As I am writing this, Pan, now a staid world-wise
dog, with the experience of four years of roaming
over the highways of the country showing in his wise,
kind eyes, sits at\my feet and is probably wondering
what I am writing about. I can wish my friends
nothing better than the good fortune to acquire a
pal like Pan.
Close Connection
BETWEEN Salt Lake City, Utah, and Ely,
Nevada, the Lincoln Highway and the
Midland Trail, now the Roosevelt Na-
tional Highway, coincide for about three hundred
miles. The country between these two cities is
most bleak and forbidding, albeit that it has, like
all desert regions, a certain fascination of its own.
The Great Salt Lake Desert, formerly called the
Great American Desert and the Sevier Desert, be-
sides several desert mountain ranges between the
two cities, made it a matter of great concern to
locate the route not where the best but the least
bad condition prevailed. In hunting for this least
bad route I traversed all the possible options avail-
able north and south of the lake, and am probably
the only man who has covered them all.
While the route as now located has been so far
improved as not only to rob it of any possible danger
but even make traveling over it a matter of merely
covering ground and enjoying the opportunity to
view this arid section without worry or apprehen-
sion, it was entirely another matter to roam through
this region in a motor car while searching for the
line of least resistance for a highway, water being
the constant anxiety of our party.
On one of these trips we went south from Ely
via Newhouse to Milford, Utah, and made this
little town without serious hardships. From Mil-
ford our route lay northeast across a corner of the
Sevier Desert, and we learned that there was no
water for about forty-five miles. As a strong wind
78
CLOSE CONNECTION 79
blew from the southwest, thus compelling us to
travel with it, we were somewhat apprehensive in
regard to having our motor overheat, and conse-
quently loaded our car with extra water containers,
so that on starting out we carried an extra supply
of twelve gallons of water for our radiator, surely
enough, as we thought, to cover all contingencies.
My wife, the mechanic and I made up the party
of three.
We had not gone far from Milford, traveling in
a cloud of our own dust carried on the breeze at
about the same speed as our own, when our motor
ran hot. With only slight concern we stopped and
filled the radiator. After a while we had to stop
and repeat this performance every little while, and
eventually, some thirty miles out, our extra water
supply ran so low that I realized we would only
have enough for possibly another five miles, and
that would be ten miles short of the place where
we had been told we would find water. In fact, it
might be further than ten miles, as the estimate
of distances in those days, when motor cars were
rare, often was a matter of mere guesswork.
Before we had covered even the five miles we
were entirely out of water and the engine was boil-
ing hot. We were compelled to stop. From a
nearby knoll I surveyed the entire surrounding
country. There was nothing in sight but sandy
wastes with black lava hills jutting out here and
there. Things looked indeed gloomy, as being
stalled in that arid country, waterless, was really
more than serious.
My wife, who from long experience in roughing
it never loses heart, then hit upon a bright idea. In
80 CLOSE CONNECTION
a box in the tonneau we had six bottles of carefully
packed and much treasured claret of a choice vint-
age, made and presented to us by a friend in Cali-
fornia who owned a fine vineyard. Friend wife
generously offered to sacrifice the wine and accord-
ingly the box was opened and the contents of the
bottles poured into the radiator, which was hardly
more thirsty than ourselves. Nevertheless, we re-
frained from sharing even a tiny drop with our
motor, which took it all and could have used more
when the last bottle was emptied.
With new heart we cranked up and proceeded,
the motor doing very well on its unaccustomed diet.
However, in a couple of miles we were again com-
pelled to stop from the same old cause, and we were
now without further resources. About a hundred
yards ahead was a slight elevation, and in order to
take another look around — which, however, I felt
in my heart would be entirely useless, I climbed up
the slight grade, and to my utter astonishment there
appeared less than another hundred feet away — a
pool of water.
I rubbed my eyes and looked again, to make sure
it was not one of those cruel desert mirages. But
no, there it was. True, it was murky and dark
green, but it was water, really wet water. It
seemed too good to be believed all at once. The
liquid was unfit to drink, and though we suffered
keenly from thirst we were compelled to confine
ourselves to filling radiator and the extra contain-
ers. Some twelve miles further and we were out
of the desert and among cedar-grown hills, and here
we found the ranch house of a Mormon, where a
bubbling spring of cool water made us all forget
CLOSE CONNECTION
81
the past danger of the day. The ranchman, about
whose house some dozen children of very nearly
the same age were playing and staring at us with
a curiosity indicating the rarity of visits from people
of the outside, assured us that he had never known
water to remain for any length of time in any of
the many depressions of the lava-strewn region
where we found it, and assured us there had been
no rain in the region for months. Yet we found it.
Deadly Figures
NEXT to being asked what tires I use and
can recommend, the question probably most
often put to me is how many miles I
have traveled in my many years of pathfinding.
My answer is invariably that I do not know, though
I have most likely traveled more different (note
the different) miles on rubber tires than any man
in the world. This I believe to be true.
When anyone makes an offhand statement that
he has traveled two or three or four or even five
hundred thousand miles, he should not be taken too
seriously. Just apply the yardstick to these figures
The "Pull the State out of the mud" campaign in Ohio
and Michigan had ample justification and is being pushed
with excellent effect
82
DEADLY FIGURES 83
and note how they dwindle. I noted in the press
only recently that a comparatively young man had
traveled about eight hundred thousand miles in fif-
teen years and that he hoped to cover a round
million, or a distance equal to forty times around
the earth at the equator.
Let us stop for a moment and analyze these
figures. Eight hundred thousand miles in fifteen
years makes fifty-three thousand three hundred and
thirty-three miles a year, or over one hundred and
forty-one miles a day for every day in the year —
Sunday, holiday and weekday. If a day should be
missed it would be necessary to double up the next
day or to cover over two hundred and eighty-two
miles. To do this summer and winter, rain or
shine, mud or snow, for fifteen consecutive years is,
of course, preposterous. That anyone has covered
one-half that distance in that time is not impossible,
but hardly within the range of probability.
I confine myself to the safe statement that I have
made more motor trips across the United States,
East and West, North and South, than any other
man, and that these trips were mostly over different
routes.
The Black River Crossing
ON THE "Trail-to-Sunset"— later called the
Apache Trail because it leads through the
Apache Indian Reservation and connects
Springerville, Arizona, and the National Old Trails
route with Phoenix via Fort Apache, Globe and
Roosevelt Dam — the Black River separates the
White Mountains from the Natanes Range.
When I arrived at Fort Apache, in the spring of
1911, with the first transcontinental truck and its
crew, after spending eight days covering forty-two
miles across the White Mountain plateau, we were
all of us about ready for a rest. In discussing the
trail across the Black River, some twenty miles
south of the army post, with the commanding officer,
I learned that the river was at flood stage and that
three army wagons and a company of soldiers, re-
turning from the Mexican border, had been in camp
on the other side of the river for a week waiting
for the water to subside in order to be able to ford
across.
As I had crossed at this place the previous fall
and was acquainted with the lay of the land at the
crossing and also because I felt that I knew what
my crew could accomplish with the truck, I made
the proposition to the commanding officer that if
he would furnish me with a troop of cavalry, twenty
strong, I would guarantee to get his army wagons
across after having crossed with the truck. He
readily accepted my proposition and next morning
I learned that the troop had started out at daylight
and would be at the crossing when we arrived.
84
THE BLACK RIVER CROSSING
85
The first transcontinental truck crossing the plateau of
the White mountains in the lands of the Apaches,
Arizona, at an elevation of 9000 ft.
The trail leads through a very rough and broken
country, the former stronghold of the notorious
chief Geronimo and his band of murderous Apaches,
where plenty remote and secure hiding places
abounded. Our progress over the twisting, uneven
and often steep trail was naturally slow and it was
the middle of the afternoon before we arrived at the
river, where we found the cavalry encamped.
The Black River is a swift mountain stream and
only some seventy-five feet wide. Upon looking
on the racing, leaping and dancing current I confess
that I felt somewhat uncertain that we would be
able to make our words good. However, the officer
of the post like a good sportsman had called my
bluff, though when made it was not intended as
such, so there was nothing to do but make the
attempt. The truck was a seven-ton affair, as big
as a furniture van, and was heavily loaded, hence
86 THE BLACK RIVER CROSSING
I scarcely feared that it would be swept off its feet
— or rather wheels. But it was difficult to gauge
the depth of the stream on account of the swift
current, and besides I knew that several large
boulders were in the river-bed, and these of course
could not be seen for the same reason.
One of the cavalrymen volunteered to cross with
a thin clothesline, swimming his horse across. The
animal was instantly swept off its feet and landed
on the opposite shore more than five hundred feet
down stream. After coming up to a point opposite
the truck the trooper attempted with help of the
soldiers at the army wagons to pull a heavy rope
with block and tackle arrangement across. The
raging current, getting a good hold of the four
strands of rope, threatened to pull the entire crew
into the water before it was pulled half way across.
The spray spouted many feet in the air when the
current struck the rope.
A pair of army mules were hitched to the thin
line, which in addition was run around a nearby
tree. This accomplished the end desired and the
block and tackle was made fast to a big tree. Four
mules were hitched on and slowly the big truck
nosed its way into the water. Gradually, inch by
inch, it crept across, luckily missing the boulders,
though it partly climbed one of them and slid off.
These were anxious moments. When the vehicle
had reached midstream the top of the radiator was
barely visible above the water. The magneto and
carburetor had, of course, been removed.
Upon nearing the far bank the ascent was quite
steep and the water deepest. The mules pulled
their best with every ounce of strength on the
THE BLACK RIVER CROSSING 87
hames, the rope creaked and groaned and every man
held his breath. When finally the truck stood on
the other bank, high and dry, the crossing accom-
plished successfully, there was a release of pent-up
feelings and a lusty cheer issued from every throat.
As for myself it was a moment of supreme satis-
faction, this successfully having accomplished some-
thing which had been supposed to be undoable.
But the rub was that I was still on the wrong
side of the river, as I had remained to take photo-
graphs of the task in hand. There was nothing else
to do but emulate the trooper who had swum his
horse across. Bidding a hearty goodby to the com-
pany and mounting one of the horses, I plunged in
with a camera held high above my head in each
hand. The well-trained horse seemed to know just
what was expected of him and pluckily fought the
The first transcontinental truck, stemming the swift cur-
rent of the Black River in the Apache country of Arizona.
The difficulties of the crossing were much aggravated
by the presence of large boulders in the river bed
88 THE BLACK RIVER CROSSING
grasping current, while I had quite a job to stay
on with the water up to my waist at times and both
arms high in the air.
When the other bank was safely attained there
remained yet the task of getting the army wagons
across. This was accomplished by loading them
heavily with boulders and reversing the operation
used with the truck, while the soldiers swam the
mules across. Just as night fell the work was done.
We went into camp where the soldiers had been
encamped so long and the campfire of the troops
soon lighted up the opposite shore. By daybreak
the bugle sounded and with shouts of godspeed we
parted company in opposite directions.
Today there is a bridge at this crossing, but al-
most every spring flood of this turbulent stream
causes serious damage to it and entails extensive
repairs. At least two bridges have been swept away
by the flood from this location.
Just Frogs
A ONE time, while traveling over what was
later named the George Washington High-
way in South Dakota, I encountered a most
curious phenomenon. I had heard that once in a
blue moon such incidents happened in various sec-
tions of the prairie states, but had never before,
nor have I since, experienced anything like it.
As we motored along a natural prairie road an
immense black cloud was racing fast towards us,
portending one of those cloudbursts which so often
visit the prairie country at any uncertain time dur-
ing the hot summer months. On meeting the blast
of cold wind which indicated that the downpour
might start any moment, we hastened to get out the
curtains and fasten them on the car. But as almost
everyone who has had occasion to do a similar stunt
in a jiffy will know, the right curtains got in the
wrong place and vice versa, so that by the time
we had them properly sorted and really were on the
way to do the thing right, the storm struck us.
We had to abandon the effort and hopped into
the car to get under cover. Here we huddled, hold-
ing the curtains before us as shields against the fierce
slanting rain which literally fell in sheets while
flashes of lightning played about us continuously.
These sudden storms on the open prairie are no
jokes, and as no one knows where lightning may
strike we certainly spent an anxious fifteen minutes.
Shortly the storm had passed over. Our cover
had been insufficient and in spite of our attempts
to protect ourselves we were wet as drowned rats.
89
90 JUST FROGS
The whole inside of the car was also wet and full
of hopping, wriggling little black things which gave
us all a creepy feeling. They proved to be tiny
frogs about the size of a man's thumbnail. In a
few minutes the sun appeared and we saw the road
ahead and the ground in all directions just black
with little frogs, which jumped, lively and frisky,
in all directions. There were millions upon millions
of them. It was impossible to set a foot down
without crushing dozens of the creatures.
After putting on skid chains we proceeded slowly
and for five miles saw frogs as far as the eye could
see in all directions. Then all at once we were
out of this area of animate things and it felt almost
like reaching shore after a voyage through turbulent
seas. For every revolution of the wheels our tires
crushed hundreds of frogs and we must have killed
millions of them before reaching what may be
termed dry ground.
The theory of local people who have seen similar
phenomena is that these frogs are sucked up out of
a swampy region by a waterspout and carried a
great distance, possibly a hundred or more miles,
before some atmospheric condition is encountered
which causes the precipitation. It certainly was an
eerie experience.
Diamondbacks
HAVING motored into so many remote
regions, far from habitations, in all of
our Western, Southwestern and Southern
States, I have seen thousands of rattlesnakes of
many different varieties, from the almost black
swamp rattler of Florida to the small sidewinder
of the Colorado desert, in California; from the
green rattler of the Staked Plains to the pale, dusty
specimen of western Kansas, and the vicious kind
in the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico; even
the rock "varmint" of Nevada and the kind that
the Hopi Indians — who seemingly are immune
against their poison — carry in their mouths during
the weird snake dances. But, in my opinion, the
Texas diamondback rattlesnake, found in the mes-
quite chaparral along the lower reaches of the Rio
Grande Valley, takes first prize both for size and
general cussed viciousness.
At one time while I was traveling a few miles
back from the Rio Grande, going from Eagle Pass
to La Pryor, we were following a lonely trail
through the chaparral when, on account of the sand
and general heavy condition of the going, dusk over-
took us while we were yet many miles from our
destination for the night. It was an unusually mild
evening, following the first really warm day of the
early spring. We had seen no snakes at all during
many days of travel in that country and assumed
that they were still hibernating.
As the day was waning we saw our first snake
and thought nothing of it. Shortly we ran across
91
92
DIAMONDBACKS
another in the middle of the trail, and from then
on for the next hour saw more rattlesnakes than
we ever had in all our lifetime before. They all
seemed to be in the trail, and we drove over and
crushed several hundreds of them. They all were
of unusually great size, full-grown specimens, and
evidently had all emerged from their winter quar-
ters at the same time, called forth by the warm
spring day.
One particular chap was of such great size that
I stepped out of the car to kill him for his skin.
He retreated to a small bush near the edge of the
trail and fought back fiercely, making repeated
strikes at the heavy stick with which I belabored
him. It was my intention to injure his skin as
little as possible, and it took some time to dispatch
him, as he seemed to have more than the nine lives
traditionally allotted to the cat. However, he
.
The mesquite chaparral of the Rio Grande border in
Texas is the home of the diamond-back rattlesnake, the
largest of this species of poisonous reptiles
DIAMONDBACKS 93
finally had to give up, and I slung him on the
running board while his jaws were yet spasmodically
making their plucky, dying attempts to open and
strike.
Next morning I had a Mexican skin him. This
was done by cutting off his head and tail and turn-
ing his skin inside out, peeling it off the carcass.
The skin was then reversed, the tail end tied with
a string, and the snake's beautifully marked cover
filled with cornmeal to absorb all the moisture from
its inside. Finally, the head opening was tied se-
curely with a string, and the affair, looking like
a huge sausage, was thrown across some of the
baggage in the tonneau. I noticed the Mexican
carefully buried the broad, arrow-shaped head of
the snake in order to remove the danger of anyone
stepping on it and possibly being poisoned by its
fangs.
When we pulled up to the door of one of the
hotels in San Antonio, one of the negro bellhops
solicitously came out to help remove the baggage.
His eyes fairly bulged and his complexion turned
almost pale with fright when he reached in for the
suitcases and his hand came in contact with the filled
snakeskin. With a howl he jumped back and no
argument could induce him to again approach the
car until I had removed the "snake." To tell the
truth, this descendant of the tempter of the Garden
of Eden did look mighty lifelike until one noticed
the absence of its terminal extremities.
It was a real Texas diamondback, the pattern
on its back being most clearly marked in black,
gray and white, a really rattling big rattler.
The Top of the Cascades
FOR some years after the advent of the auto-
mobile the State of Washington, as far as
concerned motor vehicle traffic, was to all
practical purposes almost like two different hemi-
spheres. The great "Inland Empire," as the East
Washingtonians proudly, and with justice, like to
call their part of the State, was practically isolated
from the Puget Sound counties by the Cascade
range of mountains, except for a rough trail with
steep grades through the dense forest which clad
Snoqualmie Pass. This corduroyed and slab-lum-
bered trail was in fact so exceedingly difficult to
negotiate and its passage attended with such hazards
and strain on the heavy, low-powered motor cars
of that day that the motorists who crossed the range
in a season could almost be counted on the fingers
of one hand. In addition to the difficulty of the
pass, the necessity of ferrying five miles along the
shores of Lake Ketchelus was another deterrent, as
the ferry service, intended for the limited horse-
drawn traffic which found its way over this route,
was very primitive and uncertain.
This was the condition when I laid out what I
called the Northwest Trail from Chicago to Seattle,
which route is now called the National Parks High-
way, because it gives access by short side trips from
the main trunk line to three national parks — the
Yellowstone, Glacier and Mount Rainier. After
plowing through deep dust, a sort of volcanic ash,
in Central Washington, crossing the apple belt of
the Columbia River country, and making the pas-
94
The sawtooth peaks of the Cascade Mountains, at the
summit of Snoqualmie Pass in Washington, make this
region one of the most rugged in the United States
96 THE TOP OF THE CASCADES
sage over Blewett Pass, the first car to accomplish
this feat — and it was some difficult task, with the
steep grades and many unbridged boulder-strewn
crossings of Peshastin Creek — we finally arrived at
the shores of Lake Ketchelus.
We rang the bell which was placed here to call
the ferry from its "home port," some five miles
distant, the sound being perfectly audible even that
far away in this silent solitude, and, in fact, much
intensified by the echo which was thrown back as
from a sounding-board by the forest-clad, steep
shores. After nearly two hours' wait we managed
with great care to embark the car on the none too
safe-appearing old scow which, in connection with a
tiny gasolene-motored launch, constituted the ferry.
This ferry, by the way, was made unnecessary the
following year by reason of the construction of a
highway along the shore of the lake. On disem-
barking we set out at once up the trail towards the
summit of the Cascades, which like saw-teeth
pierced the sky ahead of us. The ascent was fairly
gradual, with occasional steep pitches, but the trail
itself was exceedingly rough and narrow, winding
in and out among giant pines and firs.
In the middle of one of these steep places we
encountered an old man who was endeavoring to
coax an emaciated old horse to exert another ounce
of effort in attempting to drag a dilapidated buggy
up the trail. The bony structure of the horse was
so evident under its gray, mangy skin that he ap-
peared more like a skeleton of a horse than one of
flesh and blood. The buggy was held together with
generous applications and sundry bandages of baling
wire. All in all, the whole outfit — man, horse and
THE TOP OF THE CASCADES
97
buggy — was about as nearly played out as any
outfit I had ever seen in all my travels.
As neither kicks, curses nor kind words seemed
to have any effect on the poor brute in the shafts,
and as it was impossible in that particular spot to
drive around this archaic assembly, we stopped the
car and offered to help. Putting shoulders to the
wheels, we pushed the buggy as well as the horse
along for a couple of feet, when the worn equine,
evidently thinking it was time for a real siesta, or
possibly figuring that we might carry him as well
as the buggy to the top of the grade, lay down in
the shafts with a thud, breaking at the same time
one of the shafts and the single-tree. Unhitching
the ropes, which served for harness, and backing the
buggy, we fixed up the damage with wire, with
Volcanic ash, which forms the soil of the lower Yakima
River country in Washington, may be great for raising
crops but, being almost gritless like flour, is a very unsat-
isfactory material for roads. Great clouds of floating
dust hover for hours over the country after the passage
of a motor car during dry weather
98 THE TOP OF THE CASCADES
which the buggy was principally loaded, and then
tried to induce the horse to realize that it was
entirely unethical to slumber in the middle of the
trail, at least out of hours. But he refused to
understand our various arguments, unconcernedly
stretching out on his side and continuing his visit
to horse heaven, the old gentleman in the meantime
insisting that his faithful friend was neither balky
nor worn out — no, sir, no more than he was him-
self— but merely a little tired. And when he be-
came tired, he usually took a rest.
As the old man's appearance seemed to point to
an age of close to four score years, and conveyed
no indication of prosperity or means of feeding
either himself or his horse, this assurance was not
very encouraging. However, his story proved in-
teresting, as he told of his having traveled all the
way from Texas with his outfit; had spent seven
months on the trail and was headed for Canada,
where he fiad heard there were fine chances to get
free land and opportunities were offered to "get
ahead" for anyone that was strong and willing to
work. He presented such an illuminating example
of optimism and undiluted pluck that we were forced
to gaze at the man in wonder and admiration.
Meanwhile, the horse had evidently figured out
that there was nothing further to be gained by
playing 'possum, so he struggled to his feet and
started wabbling ahead, and we wisely let him go
to get him out of the way. Hauling and pushing
the buggy to the top, we found him calmly waiting
to be again tied to the shafts. He positively seemed
to enjoy the support of the two wooden braces, as
they furnished him something to lean on. With a
The pathfinder, passing through the giant forest of
Snoqualmie Pass, Washington, made his laay over
atrocious corduroy roads like these, noiv replaced by an
excellent highway
100 THE TOP OF THE CASCADES
generous donation from our commissary, we left
the old gentleman and his horse with the best wishes
for a successful ending of his adventure. I can
almost assert that I saw the old joker of a horse
slyly wink at me as I turned in the car to wave
a final greeting to his master as we forged ahead.
How on earth this outfit negotiated the grades that
we found farther up the trail has always been a
mystery to me.
After battling with the rotten corduroy road,
which by reason of the fact that the sun never pene-
trated through the dense tops of the immense forest
trees was everywhere slippery and slimy, we
eventually found good going at North Bend and
arrived at Seattle safely. The photographs which
I had taken to show the condition of this sole route
for vehicle connection between the east and west
part of the state was so convincing, when repro-
duced in the Seattle papers, accompanied by a story
of the state of affairs and the importance of having
them remedied, that a movement was set on foot
to effect necessary improvements. Two years sub-
sequently an $800,000 highway with easy grades
throughout carried the increasing motor-car traffic
through Snoqualmie Pass. This year and next,
1920 and 1921, the highway will be paved with
concrete.
In the Bighorns
SOME years ago I made a survey of the Black
and Yellow Trail, which is a direct cross-
country route from Minneapolis to the Yel-
lowstone National Park, and gets its name because
it runs through the Black Hills of South Dakota
and Yellowstone Park. It crosses the northern part
of Wyoming and in this region traverses a rough
and unsettled country, running across a region of
so-called "bad lands," besides crossing the Bighorn
mountains and the Powder and Bighorn rivers.
We traveled with two cars, a large one for carry-
ing passengers and their personal baggage, and a
small, light car to carry tents and general camp
equipment. We encountered considerable rough
going in South Dakota, at one time passing through
a large section where dry farming had been at-
tempted by many settlers who had been induced by
unscrupulous land agents to buy land at low rates
and on long payments, only to be compelled to give
up the hopeless task of raising crops after several
years of deprivation and hardships. They had
simply left for other parts, abandoning their equity
in the lands and all improvements. Their aban-
doned dugouts or small shacks dotted this region
and remained as monuments to their brave efforts
and blasted ambitions to be self-supporting and pro-
ducing owners of homes. These were indeed monu-
ments of sadness, failure and despair.
Near Huron we passed a large ranch owned by
a half-breed Indian, on which he raised buffaloes.
The American bison, even those kept on fenced
101
102 IN THE BIGHORNS
ranches, had become so scarce since their extermina-
tion as wild game, that specimens were in much
demand for zoological gardens all over the country,
and this particular herd had so dwindled that their
owner desired to dispose of those remaining, some
fifty animals. They were offered to the United
States Government, but, through parsimony, red
tape, or lack of foresight, or possibly a mixture of
all three, the negotiations were so prolonged that
the owner of the herd accepted an offer for them
from the Canadian Government, and these splendid,
slow-breeding animals were thus lost to our country.
Leaving Deadwood, in the Black Hills, where the
surrounding rich mining region has much besides
the tales of the exploits of Deadwood Dick and the
experiences of the Deadwood stage to make it fa-
mous, we traveled via the poetically named town of
Sundance, reminiscent of Indian ceremonies, and
across the "bad lands," a region where nothing but
sage brush grows — and often not even that — to
Buffalo, and then entered the Bighorn mountains
after descending the steep grade of Crazy Woman's
Hill, on the creek of the same euphonious name.
Everything went well and we expected to reach
Ten Sleep — another illuminating Indian name, one
sleep meaning a day's travel — by night. As the
trail was very dim we hesitated at one place, where
it forked and either trail showed about the same
usage, or rather lack of usage ; and, as most often
is the case, he who hesitates is lost. Thus we chose
the wrong fork, and after ascending and descending
several steep moraines which tested our cars to the
utmost, we finally attained the crest of the moun-
tains, where my aneroid showed an altitude of 9,500
IN THE BIGHORNS 103
feet. It was now near dusk and I realized we had
taken the wrong fork, some fifteen miles back. To
make matters worse, as we were struggling out of
a small swampy spot the strain became too great for
metal to stand and our rear live axle snapped.
Here was a cheerful situation: forty miles from
the nearest habitation, which was at Ten Sleep;
nearly two miles up in the air, and, to cap the
climax, a very slender supply in our commissary
box. Although it was practically midsummer, only
barely past the middle of August, the evening and
night was bitterly cold and the blazing logs of the
campfire felt very grateful. Realizing that we
would be out of food in another twenty-four hours,
I was mighty glad that we had two cars with us.
Next morning the small car was dispatched to Ten
Sleep" to have the broken axle welded, if perchance
there was a blacksmith in the little town; if not,
it would have to proceed to Worland, another forty
miles beyond and rough going all the way. In
either case it would be gone at least two days, so
that the prospects of reduced rations for the remain-
ing party loomed bright ineed.
Strolling around the neighborhood of the camp
during the day, it seemed to me on a couple of
occasions that I heard the distant bleating of sheep,
but again, on listening intently for a repetition of
the sound, I was unable to verify my impression.
The next morning, after a slim breakfast, we had
an empty foodbox — and our appetites were mighty
keen up there in the wonderfully pure air. Again
I thought I heard sheep bleating, and determined
to set out on a trip of exploration. After going a
couple of miles I knew that I had chanced upon
104 IN THE BIGHORNS
A couple of days were spent at this palatial residence,
the home of a sheepman on top of the Bighorn mountains
in Wyoming, while repairing damages to our car
the right direction, and that my impression about
the sheep was right, for now I very distinctly heard
the sheep and also the barking of a dog.
Hastening in the direction of the sound, I found
a flock of some two thousand sheep, with a herder
in attendance. He was a wrhite man and very glad
to see one from the outside. After an explanation
of our predicament, he directed me to his wagon,
his lonely home on wheels, and told me to help
myself from his ample commissary, containing flour,
bacon, condensed milk, canned fruit and other
necessaries. He also lent me his horse to carry the
stuff to our camp, but could not leave his flock for
fear of it being attacked by wolves. This generous
hospitality put us beyond danger of privation. On
returning with the horse later in the day, the herder
refused absolutely to accept any recompense for the
IN THE BIGHORNS 105
food and would only take some magazines which I
had brought him.
That night the other car returned from Ten
Sleep, where the axle had been welded by a black-
smith, who fortunately was located there, and also
bringing a supply of food. Next morning we set
out retracing our way towards the fork where we
had made our mistake three days before. Before
reaching that far, however, the axle once more
broke in the same place, and again the little car
had to make the rough journey to Ten Sleep in
another effort to have the damage repaired. That
night a heavy snow fell on the mountains, and it
was bitterly cold. While wood was plentiful it was
wet from the snow, and thus it was difficult to keep
the campfire ablaze, causing us keen suffering, as
we had hardly sufficient clothing to keep warm
under such conditions after dividing it with two of
our party who were quite thinly clad.
Another two days and our little savior car ap-
peared, and once more we were able to move. This
time we made within twenty miles of Ten Sleep
when for the third time the axle snapped, again in
the same place.
The little car's journey to the blacksmith shop
and return this time was made within twenty-four
hours, and eventually we reached the little town
and, to our great delight, found as clean and well
kept a little hotel as it had ever been our pleasure
to encounter. \ For many a long day the comforts
of this place, with its good home-cooked food, re-
mained in our grateful memory, after the trials and
tribulations on top of the Bighorns.
Photographing the Red Man
IT IS said that all Indians are averse to being
photographed. My pathfinding has at one
time or another brought me in contact with
most of our Indian tribes, and as I am a consistent
camera fiend my experiences have shown that upon
the whole this assertion is fairly correct. How-
ever, with few exceptions I have found that the
Indian is generally a shrewd enough business man
to appear hostile towards the camera until he is
properly mollified by a dose of palmoil. The more
copious this dose the more amenable towards the
ordeal he becomes and the less fear of "the evil
eye" he exhibits, even to the extent of overcoming
religious scruples.
On the Flathead reservation, in Montana, I was
told that it would be absolutely impossible to get
Chief Louis Pierre to pose for a snapshot, but, being
properly introduced and having applied the uni-
versal persuader in a diplomatic and generous
manner, he consented to "have his picture took."
However, first he sent one of his bucks for his
favorite cayuse, as he deemed it below his dignity
to be photographed afoot, like the humbler members
of his household. Mounted on his horse, he issued
commands to his followers and ordered them to
procure their rifles and guns from the tepees. He
then arranged them to suit his idea of martial posi-
tion and, taking a stand at the head of the line,
grandiloquently signalled to "let her go."
At another place on the same reservation I no-
ticed a tepee picturesquely located near the shore of
106
PHOTOGRAPHING THE RED MAN 107
Chief Louis Pierre, of the Flathead Indians in Montana,
insisted on mounting his cayuse and marshalling the male
members of his family, heavily armed, into proper forma-
tion before consenting to being photographed
•
Flathead Lake and surrounded by small white birch
trees. It made such an unusually pleasing picture
to the eye that I jumped out of the car and ap-
proached, in the meantime adjusting the focus as
well as the aperture and speed of the shutter to
suit the light. As I snapped the shutter some one
on the inside of the tepee heard the click and an
Indian came out with a bound, leveling a Win-
chester rifle at me. He looked fiercely at me and
insisted that I take out the film and destroy it in
his presence. But again the silver-tongued clink
of coin made it all right.
Once, among the Mohave Indians near Needles,
California, I attempted in vain to persuade several
picturesquely squalid individuals to consent to being
photographed. By various ruses I had managed to
steal a few snapshots, when I encountered an ex-
108 PHOTOGRAPHING THE RED MAN
ceptionally good subject in the way of an old crone,
sitting before her reed hut, making pearl watchfobs.
I used my most persuasive arguments and bought
more than enough watchfobs to last me for the rest
of my life ; but it was no use, she persistently and
most emphatically refused to be photographed. As
I had my camera open, with proper adjustments
except as to focus, I surreptitiously set this at
twenty feet and turned on my heel, ostensibly to
leave the neighborhood. When I was about twenty
feet away from the hut I suddenly whirled around
and snapped the button.
The old squaw showed surprising agility in get-
ting to an erect position. She picked up a couple
of stones and hurled one of them with great force
directly at me, exhibiting the greatest fury as she
came running towards me. Fortunately I dodged
the first missile, turned on my heel and beat an
ignominious retreat at top speed. My driver had
the car nearby with the motor running, and as I
jumped in the second stone came whistling through
the air and struck the fender of the car, making
quite a dent in it. As I turned around to watch
the enemy, she was picking up another stone and
came running after us, but of course in a few sec-
onds we were beyond range.
The Yuma Indians are even more hostile to the
camera than their cousins, the Mohaves. Tourists
who stop over from transcontinental trains for a
visit in the town of Yuma find that these Indians,
men as well as women, are most expert at shielding
their faces when encountered on the sidewalks of
the town. They always have an eagle eye cocked
for cameras and are prone to make trouble when
PHOTOGRAPHING THE RED MAN 109
they think that some one has succeeded in taking
a snapshot of them.
Realizing the situation, I took a drive out on
their reservation and visited some of their farms,
but was in every instance unsuccessful in persuading
any of the tribe by any means whatsoever to con-
sent to be photographed. Even their chief, Pas-
quale, who seemed most intelligent, would not have
his picture taken on any condition. I had about
given up the hope of success when I encountered
two squaws at a place where the road was com-
pletely hidden from the surrounding country by tall
reeds. They were returning to their houses on the
reservation from a visit to the town. Stopping the
car, I pulled out a handful of silver coin and, after
much talk and the promise of a dollar apiece, they
consented to let me take a photograph of them, pro-
vided I was sure that no one was in sight to see
the performance and upon my solemn promise that
I would not show the pictures to any one in Yuma.
I decided to use the plate camera in place of the
kodak, in order to secure a large photo of them and
also to insure perfect focus. There is where I made
my mistake. While the tripod was being erected
and the formidable camera with its black focusing
cloth gotten in readiness, the inherent fear of the
thing evidently began to take possession of them
and make them exceedingly nervous, I noticed
their trepidation and hastened to get everything in
shape, not even taking the time to procure a careful
and sharp focus. As I squeezed the bulb and they
heard the click of the shutter, they turned and ran
into the reeds as fast as they could, without waiting
for their dollars. This disregard of the money con-
110 PHOTOGRAPHING THE RED MAN
vinced me that their fear was genuine and that I
might count myself lucky to have secured this pic-
ture, even though the focus proved to be a little off.
Among the pueblos of New Mexico there is
little trouble to get Indians to pose for the camera,
as they have long since learned that the operation is
as painless as it is profitable and that no evil results
follow. But some of these tribes have been badly
spoiled and have acquired quite an inflated idea of
their value as artistic subjects. Thus at Acoma I
was not allowed by the governor of the pueblo to
unpack my photographic outfit without first paying
a fee of five dollars into the local government
treasury.
At Zuni I found little difficulty in getting the
governor of that pueblo to act as my official guide
and introducer to any member of the tribe whom
I might want to photograph, of course for a con-
sideration, both to the guide and to the subjects.
But when I tried to get permission to picture the
Shalako Dances, one of their most picturesque re-
ligious ceremonies, I met a most positive refusal and
had to give up the effort to do so.
While the Navahos and Hopis do not like to be
subjects for the camera and their women will hide
their faces so as not even to be able to see the evil
contrivance which takes the pictures, it is usually
not very difficult to overcome this aversion if diplo-
matically handled. However, at religious cere-
monies it is exceedingly difficult to secure the assent
of the heads of the clans to the taking of photo-
graphs. But it has been done. The Apaches,
Papagos and Pimas are entirely indifferent to the
camera and do not mind it in the least.
Americans All
IN TRAVELING through the country districts
in many of our Western, Central Western and
even Southern States, one will frequently strike
a county inhabited almost exclusively by emigrants
from one particular European nation. It impresses
one most forcibly that though these people often
cling to their native language and in their homes
retain in large measure their former method of liv-
ing, cooking their food and even to some extent of
fashioning their clothes, they strongly maintain that
above all they are Americans and with great indig-
nation resent any assertions which tend to impugn
their whole-hearted loyalty to the Stars and Stripes.
Of course, we have with us anachronisms like the
Louisiana French and the New Mexican Mexicans,
a large percentage of whom, in spite of living under
our flag for generations, do not speak or even under-
stand the English language. Then there are the
numerous Indian tribes, the original Americans, of
whom only a certain percentage understand our
language or care to learn it. However, the foreign
immigrants as a rule do learn our tongue in course
of time and at least are ambitious that their children
shall attend schools and become Americans, in all
respects like the majority of their fellow citizens.
But there are localities in some of the more re-
mote regions where these people sometimes become
to some extent isolated, and this condition tends to
handicap the fulfillment of their desire for inter-
mingling with English-speaking people and to main-
tain, with small opportunities for a change, their
ill
Sv
112
AMERICANS ALL
Passing the Pueblo of Laguna, Neia Mexico. This little
Indian republic, ivith its old church and storied apart-
ment houses, is directly by the path of one of the main
transcontinental motor routes
old-country language and ways. Again, there are
a few instances where certain nationals, especially
if they have arrived on our shores when past middle
age, find the acquisition of our language so difficult
that, in view of the fact that they live among their
old-country folks and hence are not compelled to
learn any other tongue, they naturally do not make
a very serious effort to do so.
Not long ago, I travelled through Illinois on an
inspection tour over the Lincoln Highway and had
reached a point only a few miles directly south of
Chicago, when we were overtaken by a storm which
soon made the dirt road so slippery and the going
so heavy that we decided to pitch camp in the first
likely spot available. This proved to be a country
schoolhouse yard with nice clean grass, wood in
the shed and good water at the pump. Directly
AMERICANS ALL
113
across the road was a neat cottage occupied by the
pastor of a nearby German church.
After snugging up the camp I went across to
interview our neighbors, having in mind the acqui-
sition of some fresh eggs and milk. A fine-looking
man with about seventy years behind him sat on the
enclosed porch, and to him I addressed my intro-
ductory remarks, but in reply received only a pleas-
ant smile and a sign to step indoors. Here I met
a young woman, who explained to me that her
father did not understand English, but that she
would be very glad to supply our wants. After
a few minutes' conversation with her I learned, to
my astonishment, that her father had served the
nearby church as its pastor forty-five years. As the
necessity for learning English had never been pres-
ent, he had never seriously tackled the task which
The black gumbo soil of Central Illinois, so fertile for
the raising of crops, iuhen ivet makes poor material
for roads. Failure to put on Weed chains in time soon
stops progress
114 AMERICANS ALL
he had found so full of difficulties when he first
arrived.
At another time in Western Illinois we again had
trouble with muddy roads and our engine over-
heated, necessitating a stop for water at a farm
house. The dwelling house and barns were neatly
painted and the premises as well kept as a suburban
estate. Our driver, who was of Polish descent and
quite well acquainted with several Central Euro-
pean languages and dialects, went in and asked an
old man on the porch if he could have some water
from the well. The answer was a vacant stare
which eloquently indicated that the request was not
understood, so the driver made the same inquiry
in Russian, Polish, German and three or four dia-
lects without better success.
Noticing that he started for the well to get the
water without the formality of a permission, I called
him back and tackled the job of reaching the old
gentleman's intelligence myself. Though he evi-
dently was not of the Latin race, I asked him in
French and Spanish without eliciting even a glance
of understanding, when all at once it occurred to
me to try him in one of the Scandinavian tongues,
which really should have been the most obvious to
try first, in view of the old man's cast of features.
As I was born in Norway, I tried him with Nor-
wegian first and struck the right note with the first
touch. A sunny smile lighted up his face as a
perfect stream of a Norwegian dialect, used in one
of the most remote valleys of the mountainous
Land of the Midnight Sun, issued from his lips.
He told me he had been at his wits' end trying to
make out what we were all talking about. The
AMERICANS ALL
115
wonder of it was that he had lived right on that
farm for forty-two years. As the county was settled
almost exclusively by his countrymen, he had never
learned English, though he had been a citizen for
a generation and voted regularly at every election.
In Northeastern Colorado I camped one night
near a farm in a community of Russians, a very
small number of whom could speak English. They
were good farmers and cast their votes at all elec-
tions. In Wisconsin, Minnesota and the Dakotas
are many counties where English is rarely heard
except where the younger folks congregate without
the elders being present.
Covering the Old Spanish Trail along the Gulf
Coast in Louisiana, I once had to make a detour
across some marsh lands on account of road con-
struction, and before proceeding very far promptly
mired too deep to move either forwards or back-
The roads through the cypress swamps on the Gulf coast
In Louisiana are often so sticky and "slithery" that it is
almost impossible to keep from sliding into the ditch
116 AMERICANS ALL
wards. Noticing a plantation not far away, I pro-
ceeded over to the main building and requested
from a man in the yard his assistance and the use
of a pair of horses, but had to use French before my
request was understood. While he understood my
bookish French, it was exceedingly difficult for me
to understand his patois, or Louisiana French. His
people had lived there for generations but had been
too proud to try to learn English, and besides it
was not at all necessary to take the trouble to do so,
as these people do not travel far from home and the
neighbors all understand each other. Que voulez
vouz?
In New Mexico, we arrived one evening at Rito
Quemado, in the remote western part of Socorro
County, a hundred miles from a railroad. This
little Mexican settlement is on the National Old
Trails route and I had on another occasion put up
overnight at the house of Anastacio Baca, the store-
keeper. None of the Baca family understood a
word of English, though New Mexico has been
under the Stars and Stripes since 1848. We were
made welcome with the open-hearted, proverbial
hospitality of the Mexican race. While eating our
meal, it was most amusing to watch my wife and
senora Baca carry on a conversation without either
one understanding a word of the other's language.
In spite of this, through some feminine intuition
or freemasonry of the sex, they seemed to be able
to make each other understand without further diffi-
culties than more or less acrobatic gestures, rolling
of the eyes and waving of the arms. At least, so
the performance looked to me, who was all the time
AMERICANS ALL 117
wondering how a mere ignorant male would have
succeeded under similar circumstances.
Another thing is soon noticed by any observant
traveler into country districts, and that is that he
finds no settlements of Hebrews, Italians, Greeks,
Turks or Spaniards. These races seem to prefer
congregating in cities, and devote themselves to
trades and commerce rather than agriculture. The
races that make our real farmers — the backbone of
our western agricultural regions, the producers of
the fruit of the soil — come from Central and
Northern European countries. And, best of all,
these races amalgamate and fit themselves most
readily into things American. They generally come
with intention to stay and 'do stay for good, become
citizens and are proud of the privilege.
As I am writing this the 77th Division, having
just returned from France, where it made a most
glorious record for itself in the World War, is
parading up Fifth Avenue, past my office windows.
The division is made up of New York City boys
drawn from almost every race on earth. Jews from
many lands, Italians, Armenians, Poles, Greeks,
Czecho-Slovaks, Jugoslavs, Rumanians, Hungarians,
Germans, Scandinavians and many other original
ingredients of the melting pot, march by, proud of
having served the flag — now Americans all and the
sinews of the nation.
Some "Hotels ! '
NATURALLY, I have had a rather unusual
opportunity in my ramifying motor trips to
sample hotels. I have found that there are
more varieties of "hotels" in our country than are
embodied in the various names of hotel, hostelry,
inn, tavern, cafe, wirthaus, rathskeller, bodega,
kaiserhof, pensionat, and all other European varie-
ties of establishments that cater to looking after a
wayfarer, all put together. The term hotel is ap-
plied indiscriminately to such establishments as the
Commodore in New York and the Blackstone in
Chicago, or the Ambassador at Atlantic City, whose
vast piles look more like huge office buildings than
anything else, all the way down through the chro-
matic scale to such structure as the shack at Cisco,
Utah, which proudly exhibits the sign "hotel" over
its door, the sole entrance into a hut built of dis-
carded railroad ties stood on end.
Also, the disposition of some of the lordly beings
who superintend the management of some of the
gilded palaces are as different from that of the
humble bonifaces who in their shirt sleeves come
out and with glad hand of hospitality help to c:\rry
in your baggage as human nature is given to differ.
On my first trip across the United States in a
motor car, we put up at one of the more pretentious
hotels in one of the largest Middle West cities, a
big, multj-storied building with pretensions to have
everything of the very latest in comforts and clock-
like management, including a special clerk for each
floor. That night a thief entered our suite, chloro-
118
SOME "HOTELS" 119
formed my wife and me, and carried away all our
traveling money, amounting to several hundred
dollars, but carefully and studiously refrained from
touching any of the jewelry which was openly dis-
played on the dresser.
When we came out of our narcotic coma and
realized what had happened and a search divulged
the theft, I of course made a complaint to the man-
ager. He merely calmly asserted that such a thing
could not happen in his well-regulated establishment
and seemed to think that that assertion should
suffice, and that I really was quite presumptuous
in insisting that it nevertheless had happened. The
situation was something like the Irishman in jail
who insisted he really was there, though his lawyer
maintained that he could not be jailed for the
alleged offense.
This hotel typified the high note at one end of
the chromatic scale, while the shack at Cisco typi-
fied the other extreme or bass note. Within a
dozen miles of the little town of Cisco, of a half
dozen houses near the Utah-Colorado line, we had
the misfortune to break several teeth in the master
gear of the differential on our car, and were com-
pelled to stop and stay where we were while our
companion car ran into Cisco for a team of horses.
In the course of nearly two days these arrived and
hauled us in. When we reached Cisco, tired and
worn after our trying experience in this desolate
country, we were dismayed to find that the "hotel"
was a low structure built of discarded railroad ties
stood side by side on end, and naturally so low that
we had to stoop upon entering.
Asking the woman, whom I found in the kitchen,
120
SOME HOTELS
The pathfinder often encountered very primitive accom-
modations which, however, generally were off-set by the
glad hand of welcome and hearty hospitality
if she had a room for us, she said: "Sure; help
yourself." Inquiring where the room was, she
pointed to a pile of blankets, heaped in a corner of
the only other room outside of the culinary depart-
ment, and told us to take one, spread it out wher-
ever our fancy dictated, and right there was our
room and also our bed, for which she made the
modest charge of fifty cents, payable in advance.
While this was somewhat discouraging, we were
pleasantly surprised to sit down to a really good
home-cooked meal, which with beds prepared by
means of our car's cushions made us feel that lots
of folks fared worse than we did that night.
In the hot country of the Mohave, Colorado and
Gila river deserts there are other hotels besides the
well-managed railroad hotels, such as those of the
Harvey system, usually named after one of the
Spanish conquistadores or padres. At the smaller
SOME "HOTELS" 121
desert railroad stations — there being no other set-
tlements in the desert — frequently the "hotel" is
what is called a tent-house. This kind of a house
is wooden as to the floor and the first four feet from
the ground up, while the balance, side and roof, is
canvas, and there are no windows except screened
openings. They make cool sleeping quarters and
are often comfortably furnished.
In the non-English-speaking Mexican towns of
New Mexico the "hotel" or posada is usually a low
adobe structure, cool, clean and comfortable though
primitively furnished. It is said that these adobe
houses are the easiest kind to build. As Chas. F.
Lummis, the writer, puts it : "One merely flays one's
lawn, stands the epidermis on end and roofs it."
However the usual Mexican diet, generally strong
with red pepper, is beyond the average American
stomach.
Having had experience with unwelcome little
brown bedfellows in several hotels in small towns
of the Middle West prairie states, I have made it
a practice to carefully examine the bedding for sign
of vermin, even carrying a small electric pocket
torch for the purpose, and on several occasions have
endured the indignant protest of the landlord or
landlady. But, as I told one especially irate host in
one of the smaller Western Nebraska towns, I
never could get used to these unbidden guests and
didn't propose to furnish them with free board,
hence I should have to insist upon the search. Yes,
indeed, there are hotels — and hotels.
Lost— But Recovered
A ONE time when I covered the route later
given the long and awkward name of
Pike's Peak Ocean to Ocean National
Highway we traveled through a rough and, for
long stretches, uninhabited country in Colorado
and Utah. We had the misfortune to break a rear
axle in the big game country of Northwestern
Colorado while attempting to pull out of a deep
and sandy arroyo some twenty miles from the near-
est habitation. The driver set out to walk the
twenty miles for help. While he was gone the rest
of our party were soon out of provisions, but fortu-
nately I discovered smoke some two miles off, and
upon investigating, found the camp of a couple of
Mexican hunters for wild horses. These provided
us with food, so we eventually got away all right.
It was interesting to note the superb horsemanship
and fleet bunch of horses of these hunters. Indeed,
they needed fleet mounts to chase, tire out, and
finally lasso or coral the best specimens in the herds
of wild horses, as these were also very speedy, but
had not the same stamia for endurance as the
gentle stock.
At a ranch near the state line we had the expe-
rience for the first, only and last time in the entire
West of being refused something to eat. Not but
what there was plenty of provisions at the ranch,
but excuses were made that it really was too much
bother to get it for us. However, we were eventu-
ally able to coax a pitcher of milk and a few slices
122
LOST BUT RECOVERED 123
of bread from the inhospitable queen who evidently
lorded it over the household.
On this trip at a little town in Utah, we found
quarters for the night in a rather unprepossessing
little "hotel" in a small town. After leaving the
place next morning my wife discovered that she had
left her rosary, as she supposed, under her pillow,
and forgot to remove it on arising in the morning.
Some days later, upon again reaching a city, I wrote
back to the hotel explaining the result of my wife's
forgetfulness and asked that the beads be mailed to
my New York office, as my wife prized them highly
on account of certain associations connected with
them.
When, in course of time, we returned to New
York and found no trace of the rosary nor any
communication from the hotel people of the little
Utah town, it was naturally given up as lost and
the incident soon forgotten. However, three years
later, a package and letter came from the little town.
The package contained the rosary and the letter
explained that it has just been found under the
mattress of the bed my wife occupied when we
stopped there.
Some uncharitably-minded person might make
facetious remarks about the length of time between
the airings of the beds in this hostelry or utter
words to that effect. Three years does seem a
mighty extended time for the discovery of the lost
article as long % as it admittedly was found in the
very bed where it was said to be lost but, however,
my wife was glad to recover her precious beads and
I shall naturally refrain from speculations.
The Un-Named Pass
IT WAS at the time of laying out the Midland
Trail, now the Roosevelt National Highway,
that I first crossed Nevada in a southwesterly
direction. Between Ely and Tonopah, a distance
of nearly two hundred miles, there were only four
habitations and the country exceedingly barren, of
a desert and volcanic nature. We crossed desert
valleys and low mountain ranges all the way, but
found the going surprisingly good, the soil being
for the most part a disintegrated granite, almost
like a fine gravel, and this made the ground firm
and practically immune to the \vashing which the
occasional cloud bursts generally cause in adobe soil.
Beyond Tonopah, a productive silver mining
camp, and Goldfield, the location of one of the
really big producing gold mines of the country, the
territory becomes rougher. On the entire distance
from Goldfield, Nevada, to Big Pine, California,
a matter of a hundred and nineteen miles, there are
only three inhabited places, Lida, a small mining
camp in Nevada, Oasis, a ranch just across the
California line, and Gilbert's Ranch. Shortly be-
yond the latter we began to ascend the White
Mountains range through a picturesque, black-
walled canyon, and at the summit found a U. S.
geological bench mark showing an altitude of seven
thousand two hundred and seventy-six feet.
The descent from the mountain, on an easy
gradient through a winding canyon, presented one
of the most beautiful views I have " seen in Cali-
fornia, and the pass formed one of the most impres-
124
THE UN-NAMED PASS 125
// would be difficult to find an equal continuous mileage
of good natural gravel road as that reaching across the
State of Nevada from Ely to Tonopah
sive entrances into the Golden State. The vista,
as one descended the slope of the mountain, reached
across the Owen River valley and straight ahead
was shut off by the towering wall of the Sierra
Nevadas, with Mount Whitney overtopping all the
surrounding high peaks. Mount Whitney is 14,500
feet high and the highest peak within the bound-
aries of the United States. For a hundred miles
up and down the valley one could see this rock
wall, rising steeply from the valley floor practically
without foothills. The top of the sky-piercing
peaks were snow-clad, while the valley was green
with growing crops, cottonwoods and willows.
Above it all the wondrous colors of a glorious sun-
set touched the shoulders of the peaks with gold,
silver and scarlet, contrasting strongly with the
somber shadows of the chasms and canyons which
rent the mountain side.
WESTGARD
PASS.
NAMED FOR
A.LWESTGARD IN
RECOGNITION OF
DISTINGUISHED
SERVICE RENDERED
TRANS-SIERRA
CALIFORNIA
THE UN-NAMED PASS 127
The picture was wonderfully impressive and long
lingered in our memories. Near the foot of the pass
we were met by a delegation from the town of
Bishop, in Owen River valley, who came to bid
us welcome to California as pioneers over this route
and to tender us the hospitality of their town. This
delegation was led by Wisner Gillett Scott, than
whom no man in California deserves more honor
for untiring, intelligent and withal patient work
for the development of good roads in the State, a
man who has persistently pointed out the practical
as well as esthetic value of California's wonderful
attractions within the Sierra Nevada range if prop-
erly exploited and put within reasonably comfort-
able reach of visitors.
I asked this delegation the name of the pass
which we had just come through, and to my sur-
prise learned that it had no name either locally or
on the State maps.
About a year later I accompanied a caravan of
some twenty cars from the East over this route,
and we were again met by the Bishop delegation,
this time at Oasis Ranch. When we reached the
summit of the pass which had impressed me so much
the year before, a stop was made before a neat
tablet erected at this spot since my last trip. The
legend on the tablet read : "Westgard Pass. Named
for A. L. Westgard in recognition of distinguished
service rendered Trans-Sierra California." A copy
of resolutions passed by the Inyo county commis-
sioners, giving the pass my name, was handed me
by the delegation. I must say that I feel most
deeply the honor shown me by California in nam-
ing this beautiful pass after me.
Our National Parks
UNFORTUNATELY, nearly all our na-
tional parks are located in the West, in the
Rocky Mountain, the Sierra Nevada and
Cascade ranges, and thus not easily accessible except
at considerable expense to the vastly greater per-
centage of our population. This, of course, could
not be otherwise, on account of the topography of
the country, and for this reason it is incumbent on
all those citizens who have had the good fortune to
enable them to spend the time and money to travel
through and enjoy these magnificent wild regions
to spread broadcast the glories of the mountains,
forests, glaciers, peaks, canyons, lakes, streams, ani-
mal life and many natural wonders of these parks,
in order to incite in their fellow citizens a healthy
desire to go and do likewise.
There are eighteen national parks, of which
ten are especially noteworthy, and all of which
should be seen by every American, worthy of the
name, before he starts globe-trotting. Most of the
famous scenic wonders of other lands would not
seem to him so impressive if he were in position to
draw comparisons between them and those in the
national parks of his own land. There are no gla-
ciers in the Alps surpassing those of Glacier Na-
tional Park in Montana, there are no geysers in
the world even approaching in interest those of
Yellowstone National Park. Where on earth is
there any chasm even faintly approaching in
grandeur the indescribable colorful vastness of the
Grand Canyon of Arizona? Mount Rainier Na-
128
OUR NATIONAL PARKS
129
Cody, Wyoming, boasts of one of the most unique monu-
ments in America. It is built entirely of Elk horns, and
is located on the main street of the town
tional Park in Washington is in a class by itself,
and Crater National Park in Oregon is a blue gem
like the finest jewel, incomparable to any other
scenic spot on earth. And where on the face of
this mundane sphere is there a spot with charms
equal to those of the Yosemite National Park in
California? The oldest living things in the world
are the giant redwood trees in the Sequoia, now the
Roosevelt National Park, in the Sierra Nevadas of
California. The prehistoric ruins of the Mesa
Verde National Park in Colorado were probably
ancient when the Pharaohs built the Pyramids, and
the towering peaks, moraines and glaciers of the
Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado are
only a few miles from one of the large cities of the
West and easily accessible to millions of our people
without undue consumption of time or expenditure
130 OUR NATIONAL PARKS
of money, while the rainbow colors on cliffs and
crags in the newly created Zion National Park in
Utah defy an artist's brush.
All of these parks — which of course are not parks
in the sense of city parks, but vast rugged regions,
often thousands of square miles in extent and teem-
ing with perpetually protected game — are left in the
primeval condition of nature and are accessible by
motor car. The United States Government, with
some niggardliness it is true, has constructed roads
and trails through them and provided frequent
camping places, with concrete cooking stoves adja-
cent to fuel and good water, besides granting con-
cessions for hotels, stage lines and other conveniences
which are administered under the close supervision
of government employees. The National Park Ser-
vice, a branch of the Interior Department, has
shown most conspicuous efficiency in the face of
decidedly penurious appropriations from Congress,
which, it seems to me, has not yet, as a body, shown
sufficient appreciation of the importance of these
public vacation grounds with their potential recre-
ative and economic benefits to the nation.
A motor-route map of the United States issued
by the American Automobile Association shows the
location of all the national parks and the best routes
leading to them. I have personally compiled this
map from actual observation in covering the main
trunk-line routes to the parks, and herewith append
a brief outline of the proper routes to use to reach
the most important of them:
Rocky Mountain National Park, near Denver,
Colorado, is reached from the Lincoln Highway or
from the Midland Trail; also from the National
OUR NATIONAL PARKS 131
Our camp in the Rocky Mountain National Park, Colo-
rado, at an altitude of about 9500 feet. Nothing on earth
can compare ivith the evening hour before the blazing
camp fire with the pipe drawing ivell and everybody
toned right for a story
Old Trails Road and Pike's Peak Ocean-to-Ocean
Highway.
Yellowstone National Park is reached by follow-
ing the Yellowstone Highway from the Lincoln
Highway at Cheyenne, Wyoming; by the National
Parks Highway or the Yellowstone Trail from
Minneapolis, or via the Black and Yellow Trail;
also by route deviating from the Lincoln Highway
at Salt Lake City or from Rawlins, Wyoming.
Glacier National Park is reached by the Park-
to-Park Highway, deviating from the National
Parks Highway and the Yellowstone Trail either
at Livingston, Three Forks or at Missoula, Mon-
tana.
Rainier National Park is reached only from Ta-
coma, Washington, on the Pacific Highway.
132 OUR NATIONAL PARKS
Crater National Park is reached from Medford,
Oregon, on the Pacific Highway, or from Lake-
view, Oregon, on the National Defense Highway.
Yosemite National Park is reached from Stock-
ton, California, on the Lincoln and Pacific High-
ways, and via Tioga Pass from the Roosevelt Na-
tional Highway (Midland Trail).
Roosevelt National Park, formerly Sequoia, is
reached from Fresno, California, on the National
Old Trails Road and will eventually be accessible
from Bishop via the Roosevelt National Highway.
Grand Canyon National Park is reached from
Flagstaff or Williams, Arizona, on the National
Old Trails Road.
Mesa Verde National Park is reached from Colo-
rado Springs or Pueblo, Colorado, via the Spanish
Trail, or from Gallup, New Mexico, on the Na-
tional Old Trails Route.
Zion National Park is reached from the Arrow-
head Trail, which connects the Lincoln, Pike's Peak
Ocean to Ocean and Roosevelt National Highways
at Salt Lake City, Utah, with the National Old
Trail Road, near Needles, California.
The National Parks Service at Washington,
D. C., issues maps and regulations of all these parks
and anyone may have them for the asking.
The Forage Stations
DURING the rush of the "forty-niners" to
the California gold fields the route through
southern New Mexico and the Gila Valley
of Arizona was thronged by caravans from the East
eager to reach the fabled El Dorado in the shortest
possible time. These individual outfits were sup-
plemented by stage lines in 1857 running all the
way from San Antonio, Texas, to San Diego and
Los Angeles, even to San Francisco, California.
These were prosperous days for the murderous
Apache Indian bands, which made travel extremely
hazardous through southern Arizona. These piti-
less shadows of the trail would lurk behind rocks
or lie in wait in canyons and swoop down upon
emigrant trains and stages, slaying men, women
and children and robbing the trains of anything of
value.
The Civil War put a stop to travel along this
route and the Apaches then began to raid the scat-
tered settlements of whites. Finally, in 1872, the
War Department sent General Crook to Arizona,
and this doughty soldier and leader soon put a stop
to the outrages. However, every now and then
the savages would break bounds and start out on
murderous raids, and it was not until 1886 when
the last fighting^ unit of the Apaches under the cruel
and vicious Geronimo finally surrendered to Gen-
eral Miles, after a most persistent and strenuous
chase of thirteen months in the mountains of
Sonora, Mexico, that troubles with the tribe were
quelled for good. Fort Apache, an army cavalry
133
134 THE FORAGE STATIONS
post, was established during this period on the
White Mountains Apache Indian reservation, the
garrison acting as a police force and salutary check
on any tendencies to further outbreaks.
This army post is located sixty-one miles from
Rice, a station on a branch of the Southern Pacific
Railroad, to the south, and about one hundred and
ten miles from Holbrook, on the Santa Fe Railroad,
to the north. As the post is located in a mountain-
ous region on the White River, practically no agri-
culture is carried on in the section, and all supplies,
even horse feed, had to be hauled from the two
railroad points above mentioned. A considerable
portion of this traffic used the rough trail through
a very rugged and broken country to Rice, and in
order to provide the freighters with quarters for
themselves and feed for their mules two forage sta-
tions were established on the route, and the running
of these stations was let out by contract to civilians,
who undertook to have the stations stocked with
food for man and beast.
One of these stations was located near the Black
River crossing, twenty-one miles from the post, and
the other seventeen miles further away in the
Natanes range of mountains. At the time of pio-
neering in a motor car over the Trail to Sunset,
now the Apache Trail, we arrived, after successfully
risking the ford across the swift, boulder-strewn
Black River, at the first forage station just as dark-
ness fell. The keeper of the station and his wife
could hardly believe that an automobile had actually
arrived at their front door. In fact, the lady had
never seen an automobile, as no motor car had ever
before chugged its way into this mountain fastness.
THE FORAGE STATIONS 135
We were hospitably welcomed to the very primitive
accommodations available. While the good lady
was preparing our supper the station keeper showed
us a rifle which he had only that day procured from
an old Indian who the week previous had killed his
wife with it and been apprehended by the soldiers
that day near the station.
This story, supplemented by others telling of
renegade Indians, bears and mountain lions, made
my companions somewhat nervous, as this was an
out-of-the-way place where few travelers came.
However, our hostess assured them that there was
no cause for anxiety, because the dogs, of which
there were several about the place, would be sure
to bark if anything unusual happened or if anybody
approached. Being tired after a strenuous day's
work, I fell into a sound sleep as soon as my head
struck the pillow, and awoke next morning much
refreshed after a fine night's rest. Not so my com-
panions. They were wan, with heavy-lidded eyes,
for want of sleep. The dogs had barked continu-
ously all night and the poor fellows had been kept
on edge for hours waiting for the expected "un-
usual" to happen, as per the statement of the station
keeper's wife.
The next year, when I again covered this route,
I was told of a wanton murder of two business
men from Globe who had taken possession of the
abandoned forage station in the Natanes range while
hunting and fishing in that section. During their
stay two discharged soldiers from Fort Apache also
made their quarters there. During one of their
meals the soldiers murdered their companions for
their pocket change and arms and started across
136 THE FORAGE STATIONS
country for the railroad. Ordinarily their crime
might not have been discovered for weeks, but it
so happened that another couple of hunters were
camped for the night not far away and heard the
shots. Upon investigating next morning they found
the bodies of the murdered men and hastened to
Globe to report the crime. A posse set out and the
criminals were eventually caught, and were in the
jail at Globe awaiting trial when this story was
told us at the White River Agency, near Fort
Apache.
Upon reaching the forage station at the Black
River crossing, where I had stopped the year before,
we found it abandoned, and as there yet remained
a couple of hours of daylight we pushed on. Near
dusk we arrived at the other forage station, where
the murders had occurred the previous week. We
took possession, installed our cots and used the stove
to cook our meal on, and the table and chairs. It
was undeniably somewhat gruesome and eerie to
sit in this room so redolent with the recent tragedy.
Upon discovering the bullet holes in the thin
wooden walls, the topic of conversation naturally
dwelt upon the crime, its execution and the sordid
motives for it.
However, upon lying down on my cot I went
to sleep soundly, but was awakened during the night
by a scratching sound which readily enough might,
in view of the environments, be termed ghostly by
anyone with nerves. I ascribed the cause to rats
scampering over the rafters above the paper-covered
ceiling of the room, but my two companions on this
trip acknowledged that they had cold chills running
up their backs from fright.
Forest Fires
I NEVER had either the time or inclination
to scale Longs Peak, which towers above
all the sublime surrounding mountain apexes,
with its majestic summit 14,255 feet above the tides
of the ocean and its sheer precipice thousands of
feet high, facing the east, in the Rocky Mountain
National Park in Colorado. But one summer,
while we had pitched our camp on Glacier Creek,
in the park, I did undertake a hike to Loch Lake,
nestling at the foot of a glacier coming off Taylor
Peak. This entailed a walk, scramble and climb of
some sixteen miles from an elevation of about nine
thousand feet at our camp to some twelve thousand
feet at the lake.
The trail at one place passed through a section
which some years previously had been burned over
by a forest fire, the stark, dead and naked trunks,
standing erect, bearing incontestable testimony to
the millions of dollars of damage, direct and indi-
rect, which is caused each year to our invaluable
forest areas by the sheer ignorance and frequently
criminal negligence of builders of camp fires. As
growing trees are the most beautiful work of nature,
the sight of a forest "burn" leaves at the same time
a deep sadness and a hot indignation at the careless-
ness which, through sheer laziness, selfishness or
ignorance, caused this arson of a landscape, destroy-
ing in a few hours millions of living wonderful
trees that, by its slow processes, nature had taken
several centuries to create and which it would take
more hundreds of years to replace.
137
138 FOREST FIRES
Thousands upon thousands of acres of valuable
forests are destroyed by fires annually in the United
States, even though of late years the rangers of the
many National Forests through eternal vigilance
and experience save other thousands of acres from
a similar fate. From a crow's-nest built in a tall
tree on a summit or from the top of an observation
tower, a ranger spots the first column of smoke,
which, by means of range-finders and compass direc-
tions telephoned in to the chief ranger's office from
two or more stations, is accurately located. Men
with axes and shovels hurry to this location and by
the expediency of removing trees which would be in
the path of the fire or by shoveling sand or earth
in incipient blazes, innumerable small fires are ex-
tinguished which, if given a free scope, would have
the potentiality of destroying thousands of acres of
fine forest.
Enos A. Mills, the author-naturalist of Longs
Peak Inn, in the Rocky Mountain National Park,
has more eloquently described a forest fire in his
book, "The Spell of the Rockies," than perhaps
anyone else. To know this quiet and reserved man,
with his deep knowledge of growing things and his
sublime love for the out-of-doors, which for the
Rocky Mountain region parallels that of John Muir
for the Sierra Nevadas, is a privilege.
When I drove my car up to his home he was
much concerned about my dog Pan, as he feared
that the chipmunks about the place would be fright-
ened. These beautiful little rodents were so tame
that they would feed out of his hand and crawl
over his clothes. The blue jay, which had its nest
on the porch, would pay little or no attention to
FOREST FIRES 139
the human beings in near proximity. It is a delight
to know Mills; his books, with their strong tang of
the glorious outdoors, are like an invigorating tonic
to an invalid; his home and surroundings are an
inspiration.
I have seen the dispiriting sight of forest burns
in many States, from the forests of Maine and the
Adirondacks to those of the Rockies, Bitter Roots,
Cascades and Sierra Nevadas, and I have for days
traveled through a pall of smoke which often was
carried hundreds of miles by the wind. From
mountain summits I have seen the whirling columns
of the thick smoke, at times shot through by leaping
flames, but only once have I been in such close
proximity to the actual nature tragedy that the heat
and ashes became oppressive and almost blinding
and the roar of the approaching catastrophe indi-
cated that there was real danger to linger in the
region. This was in northern Minnesota.
We were traveling along a rough road through
the forest. Occasional clearings with crude cabins
testified to the efforts of homesteaders to create pro-
ducing fields. An oppressive heat had been in evi-
dence for some miles and a smoke, which smelled
of burnt wood, had come on with the wind and
became thicker as we progressed. Approaching a
clearing, we met a team coming in our direction
at a gallop. In the farm wagon was a homesteader
and his family. He pulled up short and admon-
ished us to turn back at once, as a forest fire was
coming rapidly in our direction and if the wind
should increase in force would drive the sweeping
flames with incredible speed.
Without stopping to see if we heeded his advice,
140 FOREST FIRES
he started up his team of horses and had soon disap-
peared, going at top speed. I hesitated for a time
in spite of the thickening smoke and the farmer's
advice, thinking that after all we would not be in
the path of the fire and to turn back would mean
the abandonment of the inspection of a route which
I was very anxious to cover. However, when I
saw a herd of deer cross the clearing ahead with
long, frightened bounds I realized that they were
undoubtedly the advance column of an army of all
sorts of game and wild animals, whose instincts
told them of the approaching danger probably more
intelligently than the mere speculations of human
beings. With considerable trouble we managed to
turn the car around in the narrow road and were
soon back-tracking our trail with all the speed the
narrow and rough road allowed us to use safely.
In three or four miles the smoke had become so
thick and the ashes carried on the hot wind so
blinding that both seeing and breathing became a
matter of considerable difficulty, and shortly we
could hear the awful roar of the fire as it leaped
forward.
With the throttle in the last notch and the car
careening perilously, wobbling over the rough road
like a drunken man, we fortunately gained open
country and freedom from danger only a short dis-
tance ahead of the holocaust. I often shudder to
think what would have happened if by some mis-
chance we should have had a puncture or hit a
stump in the road, or anything else should have
happened to prevent us from maintaining our speed
or cause us perforce to stop.
A Close Call
DURING the pioneer days of motoring in
the West, the absence of highway bridges
over many of the larger rivers caused many
hardships and frequently much added mileage for
the motorists who ventured into the more remote
regions. Usually fords were available for horse-
drawn vehicles, but these were often too deep or
with too treacherous bottom to serve motor cars,
especially if the water were a little higher than
low mark. Thus I have been compelled to cross
railroad bridges, bumping my way across on the
ties, on several occasions when it was absolutely
essential to obtain accurate distance measurements
along a projected motor highway and making a long
detour to find a better crossing was inexpedient.
In this way I have crossed the Colorado River
into California at Needles and at Parker, when
there were no highway bridges across this stream its
entire length, while now there are two such bridges
on the main trunk-line highways, at Needles and
at Yuma. I have also crossed railroad bridges
across the Rio Grande at San Pedro, New Mexico,
and the Little Missouri River at Medora, North
Dakota, but the only time that such an adventure
entailed a risk and in fact a real danger was when
I attempted to-, cross a railroad bridge over the
Powder River near its confluence with the Yellow-
stone River, in Montana.
At this place there was a ford which ordinarily
could have been negotiated with a motor car, but
a flood had caused such a rise of the water that an
141
142 A CLOSE CALL
attempt to cross by fording was out of the question.
By making a detour of over fifty miles we could
have crossed the stream by a bridge, but that expe-
dient did not appeal to me, so I presented "creden-
tials, which I had fortunately provided myself with,
to the boss of the railroad section gang from the
general superintendent of the railroad. These com-
manded any employee of the railroad to lend me
any assistance in reason for which I might ask.
As the grade of the track was quite high and
steep it was late afternoon, even by the help of a
half dozen husky section men, before we had the
car up on the ties. I was then told that a train
was due within less than an hour, and that we had
better make haste across the thousand-feet-long
trestle bridge spanning the roaring current which
raced some thirty or more feet below. As I ex-
pected to cross in fifteen or twenty minutes, I sent
my wife across on the hand car with the section
foreman and his gang, which was composed of
reliable-looking Swedes.
A storm had been threatening for a couple of
hours and by the time we were less than half way
across the bridge, bumping very carefully and very
slowly across, with less than eight inches between
the tires on one side and the abyss below, the storm
broke with intense fury. The first blasts were so
strong that I feared at first that we would be blown
off the trestle, there being no guard rail or other
protection. In a few minutes the rain began falling
in sheets and the lightning played in continuous
flashes. The wet rubber tires and the wet ties made
a combination which, in connection with the hori-
zontal sheets of pelting rain, made our situation
A CLOSE CALL 143
worse than precarious, especially when we could not
forget that a train was soon due in a direction
opposite to that we were going.
My driver got so nervous that I took the wheel
and he walked ahead a tie at the time, turning and
motioning to right or left by signalling with his
hands in order to keep me going straight ahead and
not to slip overside. This, of course, was mighty
slow work and the tension became almost strong
enough to have unstrung anybody's nerves. It
seemed to me that we had been hours jolting along
since we entered the trestle, when I distinctly heard
the whistle of a train in a lull of the storm, though
either on account of the storm or a curve I could
not see the headlights. Screaming to the driver to
run ahead as fast as he could and never mind me,
I stepped on the accelerator with a silent prayer on
my lips, and the car shot ahead the short remaining
distance of the trestle, and then we could see the
headlights of the approaching locomotive. With
the aid of a small board the car cleared the track
and landed in the ditch just as the train shot by
with a scream and a roar which sounded positively
unearthly, combined as it was with the noise of the
storm. My wife, who was numb with fright, main-
tained afterwards that the hoarse roar and clatter
of the speeding locomotive sounded to her as a
scream of baffled rage and disappointment uttered
by some giant supernatural evil monster.
While this experience was almost melodramatic,
it ended with a touch of humor which soon made
us forget our dangerous adventure. The section
hands willingly lent us their aid, though drenched
to the skin as we all were, and in a short time we
144 A CLOSE CALL
were ready to proceed. I knew that the trail should
be a short distance — say a quarter of a mile or less
— to the left, so headed cross country in that direc-
tion. Probably on account of the blinding rain I
missed the trail and finally we decided to stop, eat
some crackers and sardines from our commissary,
and snatch what sleep we could in our wet clothes
while remaining in the seats of the car, as erecting
camp in such weather was impracticable.
When daylight broke we found, on looking
through the curtains, that we were less than a
hundred feet from the door of a ranch house, the
only house for miles around. Kind providence had
guided us to a safe and comfortable haven, as the
folks of the ranch most hospitably took us in and
afforded us an opportunity to dry our clothes and
regaled us with a wonderful breakfast of flapjacks,
eggs and coffee. We spent the balance of the day
and the next night here, in order to give the soil
a chance to dry before again proceeding, and besides
we needed the rest after our nerve-racking expe-
rience.
A fine highway bridge now spans the Powder
River where the ford was, as similar bridges now
afford safe crossings over the larger rivers on prac-
tically all the main transcontinental motor routes.
Indian Slough
ON TAKING the first truck on a trans-
continental hike we had eventually, after
all sorts of hardships and experiences
which at times seemed almost to block our efforts
to succeed in our undertaking, reached the banks
of the Colorado River at Ehrenburg. California,
the goal and reward for all our strenuous adven-
tures on the trip, was only just across a compara-
tively narrow stream, and yet so far away that we
for a while despaired of reaching it. As at that
time there were no highway bridges across the Colo-
rado either at Needles or Yuma, I had laid our
course for Ehrenburg in order to cross by the ferry
at that point, believing from a previous experience
with it that it would be large enough to get our
seven-ton truck across.
However, we learned upon reaching the little
river town, after crossing the desert from Phoenix,
that the large flat-bottomed scow, which in connec-
tion with a gasoline launch had constituted the ferry
when I crossed here a few months previously, had
been swept away by a flood and that only a very
much smaller scow or float was available. The
citizens of the little burg, which consisted of three
saloons and a store, maintained that there would
be no use attempting to take the truck across with
the available equipment, but on looking the outfit
over carefully I decided to risk it.
The first two trips across took our load of gaso-
line and oil barrels, lumber and much paraphernalia
with which we were provided in order to overcome
145
146 INDIAN SLOUGH
difficulties; also seats, hood and all parts of the
engine which could be removed, in order to lighten
the final load. With great care the truck itself
was finally gotten aboard, and almost swamped the
little scow with its weight. The current was so
swift that we had to proceed up stream close to the
Arizona bank for more than a mile before we dared
to attempt shooting across. We were a mighty
anxious crew when the ferryman headed his launch
towards the center of the stream and his Indian
helpers with long sweeps steered a course diagonally
across.
Luck was with us and we made the promised
land in safety, but found.great difficulty in discover-
ing a favorable landing place on the brush-grown
bank of the river. However, at least we were
ashore, in the thick brush, it is true, but the solid
earth underneath our feet felt good. While the
Indians chopped away the brush to enable us to get
away from the bank of the stream the rest of us
got busy assembling our outfit, which took us
twenty-four hours to accomplish. Less than half a
mile from the river we met our greatest disappoint-
ment, which looked to us like a real Waterloo. A
recent overflow of the river had left enough water
in a large depression or slough to form a veritable
lake, dotted with huge trees and about five feet deep
in the center. It extended for miles up and down
parallel to the river and, as the bottom was a slimy
ooze, there really seemed nothing to do at first but
to sit down for a few weeks and let the slough dry
up by the slow method of evaporation.
After studying the situation for a while, I partly
disrobed, made a bundle of my clothes, and with this
INDIAN SLOUGH 147
on my head waded and swam across the ill-smelling
water, which was almost thick with decayed vege-
table matter. Calling to my companions that I
would be gone two or three hours and for them to
amuse themselves as best they could by playing tag
with the millions of mosquitoes which drifted about
in clouds, I dressed and proceeded to the town of
Blythe, a private irrigation project, four miles dis-
tant. It being Sunday, I found a dozen men about
with nothing to do but take it easy after the week's
work. As they constituted the chamber of com-
merce of the embryonic metropolis, I laid our pre-
dicament before them and received the proffer of
all the mules and steel cable, formerly used for
well-drilling, that I might stand in need of if I
could show them how to succeed in getting the
heavy truck across the mucky bottom of the slough.
To tell the truth, I did not have much faith in
accomplishing the task, but, making up my mind
that the truck might as well perish by drowning
as we from mosquito bites, I assumed an air of
confidence and we brought the mules and parapher-
nalia to the edge of the slough, which was some
six hundred feet wide at the narrowest point. I
realized that it would be useless to try to haul the
heavy vehicle across the soft bottom by a direct pull
and that multiplying block and tackle had to be
rigged. This was difficult to accomplish on account
of the big trees iri the slough, which necessitated a
zigzag course.
We buried a dead-man in the trail. For the
benefit of those that do not know the meaning of
this rather gruesome phraseology, I will explain that
a dead-man means a stout log buried at some depth
148
INDIAN SLOUGH
across the direction of the pull. To this the long
steel cable was fastened, to serve as an anchor
against which to exert the force of the pull. Then
another swim across the nasty pool to superintend
the fastening of the block and tackle to the front
axle and to the first tree, which stood in the water
about a hundred feet from the edge and directly
in the path chosen for our crossing. When all was
ready four mules were hitched to the cable, and the
word was passed to go ahead. Slowly the big truck,
from which of course had been removed magneto
The crossing of Indian Slough on the Colorado River,
near Blythe, California, with the first transcontinental
truck, closely resembled submarine work
and carburetor, moved ahead and gradually dipped
deeper and deeper into the slimy water.
When it was nearing the tree to which the tackle
was fastened, the mules had walked over four hun-
dred feet from the dead-man and we had to make
a new hitch, lengthening the tackle-ropes and mak-
INDIAN SLOUGH 149
ing fast to another tree, at a different angle and
another hundred feet ahead. To make this new
hitch was no easy undertaking, as it had to be done
an arm-length under water ; but soon we again pro-
ceeded. Deeper and deeper the truck went down,
until by the time another new hitch had become
necessary the top of the radiator and hood was
just awash. To make the change of hitch on the
front axle this time was quite another proposition,
as two men had to entirely submerge themselves to
accomplish it. It took a long time, but it was
finally done and again we moved ahead, still going
deeper for every foot.
When for the third time the tackle-ropes had to
be lengthened, the water reached the knees of the
man who sat in the driver's high seat to steer. After
five different changes in our course and procuring
new hitches, we eventually pulled up on the coveted
shore. The big vehicle was received by a hearty
cheer from all throats and we all felt that we had
accomplished a real feat. The men from Blythe
went home and in three hours we followed under
our own power, little the worse for our experience
except that the truck was covered by ill-smelling
filth and we all stood much in need of a bath, which
we duly took by the bucketful at the town pump.
I learned that the swamp was called the Indian
Slough, and I do not think that anyone connected
with taking the truck across it will ever forget the
experience.
The Gospel and Good Roads
IN MANY sections of the West the most ener-
getic workers for the Good Roads movement
are the clergy. The gospel of good roads is
consistently being preached by these ministers, be
they Protestant or Catholic, and as these workers
wield a potent influence in their respective sections,
they prove an especially valuable aid in intelligently
convincing their fellow citizens of the value and
local economics of improved highways. And let me
say right here I have found these men the best of
scouts and congenial companions on many a strenu-
ous pathfinding trip.
The Rev. Father Vabre, at Flagstaff, Arizona,
he of the sunny smile and ever-unruffled disposition,
has scouted all over arid Northern Arizona with me
among whites and Indians. He has been a powerful
factor in helping to bring about the result that to-
day the National Old Trails route is graded and
provided with substantial concrete bridges across
canyons and sandy washes through a considerable
part of his sphere of influence. And it must be
remembered that this is a sparsely settled region,
there often being forty miles between settlements
and no houses between. The Rev. Father De
Richemont, at St. John's, in central Eastern Ari-
zona, a scholarly man of great influence in his
section, has also been a powerful help towards the
improvement of the road in his vicinity.
In New Mexico the Rev. Dr. H. M. Shields,
of Dawson, has taken an unusually active part in
bringing about road betterment in a region where
150
THE GOSPEL AND GOOD ROADS
151
the people were peculiarly influenced by the leader-
ship of their spiritual adviser. The Rev. Dr. S. M.
Johnson, of Roswell, New Mexico, has become an
interstate preacher of the good-roads gospel. He
is ever willing to travel any distance to attend meet-
ings where boosters are organizing bodies for the
improvement of highways. As he is a scholarly,
eloquent man, with a thorough knowledge of his
subject, results of a satisfactory nature usually
follow in his wake.
Over in Texas, the Rev. Dr. T. P. Grant, of
Brady, has stumped the whole State in advocacy of
road-bond issues, and to what end may be judged by
the fact that Texas has invested millions in road im-
provements and the good work is still going on.
Dr. Grant was one of the best companions on a
motor hike I have ever had the pleasure to meet.
The high plateaus of Northern New Mexico and
Arizona are frequently visited by an early autumn snow-
storm, causing much arduous work for those motorists
ivho happen to be afield at the time
152 THE GOSPEL AND GOOD ROADS
Over in Colorado, there is a quiet, reserved
Catholic priest at Idaho Springs, the Rev. Father
McCabe, than whom none has worked harder, and
with more splendid results, to develop the Berthoud
Pass route of the Midland Trail, the Roosevelt
National Highway. The elimination of the steep
and rough grade across Floyd Hill on this route
and the building of a good State highway through
this section must be placed to the credit of Father
McCabe.
I could keep on mentioning specific instances in
nearly all of the Western States of the well-directed
zeal of clergymen towards similar satisfactory local
results. It is merely my intention in this chapter to
acknowledge the splendid cooperation of these men
and to call well-merited attention to and show ap-
preciation of their unselfish public-spiritedness.
Kicking Up the Dust of Ages
OUR wonderful Southwest is unquestionably
one of the most interesting regions of the
United States, looked at from any number
of angles. Certainly I have found it of absorbing
interest in my pathfinding trips. As its twenty-six
Indian pueblos, every one a self-governing little
republic, inhabited by self-supporting and self-
respecting folks, living the life of their ancestors
for uncounted generations, as well as its nearly a
dozen Indian tribes living on reservations, its turbu-
lent history, its ancient civilization, its scenery, cli-
mate and resources, are recounted in my book,
"Through the Land of Yesterday," I will here only
briefly mention some of the prehistoric ruins in that
region.
At various places adjacent to the National Old
Trails route in New Mexico and Arizona, and
reached by ancient trails, some of them too rough
for motor cars, are many of the most interesting
archaeological remains in the world. The wonder
of it is that these are comparatively little known —
in fact, practically unknown — to the vastly greater
proportion of Americans. And yet quite a number
of them are easily reached by motor car and are
close to settled communities.
Thus the wonderful ruins of the vast communal
house of Tyu'onyi are located in the canyon of Rito
de los Frijoles, only thirty-five miles from Santa Fe,
itself probably the most picturesquely interesting
city in the United States and the second oldest.
This communal house contained originally seven
153
154 KICKING UP THE DUST OF AOIiS
"Compra Llena," buy wood, is the cry heard, like the call
of the "old clothes" man of Eastern cities, in Santa Fe,
Neiv Mexico, as the Indians drive their laden burrows
through the streets
hundred rooms and was a true prototype of the
modern city apartment house. Nearby in the same
canyon are hundreds of cliff and cave dwellings
which tell the student of archaeology about a civili-
zation reaching so far back into the hoary pre-
historic past that even no conjectures as to their age
are ventured by the learned men who dig, excavate,
study and draw conclusions from the pottery, skele-
tons, basketry and other remains of those who once
upon a time occupied these tiny dwellings. The
kiva, or sacred ceremonial underground chamber,
excavated on a shelf a hundred and fifty feet up
the sheer cliff side of the canyon, is a rare treat to
visit. This region forms the Bandolier National
Monument, and the Government custodian, Judge
Abbott, will most cheerfully guide anyone up to this
venerable eyrie.
KICKING UP THE DUST OF AGES 155
It is said that about twenty thousand prehistoric
ruins and cave-dwellings are located in the Santa Fe
region, some of the most interesting of which, in
addition to those in Rito de los Frijoles, are Puye,
Tsankawi, Navawi and Tchrege.
At Chaco Canyon, northeast of Gallup, there are
some ten great ruins, the largest of which is Pueblo
Bonito, with more than a thousand rooms.
On the Navaho Indian reservation in Arizona
there are a number of most wonderful ruins, as
those of the justly famous scenic Canyon de Chelly,
near Chinle, forty miles north of Fort Defiance.
Here are about two hundred ruins, of which the
"White House," conspicuously white against the
somber background of a shallow cave, is best known.
Also within less than thirty miles from the trading
post of Tyende or Kayenta are three remarkable
There are a few hairpin turns that bother cars with a
long wheelbase on the road down the beautiful La Bajada
cliff near Santa Fe, New Mexico. The pathfinder used
the old road seen to the right, and it was "some" road
156 KICKING UP THE DUST OF AGES
ruins : Betatakin, a veritable city in a splendid state
of preservation, and only discovered about ten years
ago; Inscription House, an ancient ruin, in one
room of which is found an inscription scratched on
the wall by some prowling, adventurous member of
one of the roving bands of Spaniards who in the
sixteenth century ventured far into the most remote
corners of the Spanish province of New Grenada,
as the country was then called, in search of fabled
treasure ; Keet-seel, or pottery house, a ruin clinging
to the very side of a precipitous cliff. These three
ruins constitute the Navaho National Monument.
In the southwest portion of Colorado are the
Hovenweap ruins, not yet excavated but said to be
especially interesting. Not far away is the Mesa
Verde National Park, jutting into the Southern
Ute Indian reservation. This region is reached via
the Spanish Trail-Mesa Verde Highway from
Pueblo and contains some of the most wonderful
ruins of the entire Southwest. The most conspicu-
ous among these are the Cliff Palace, Spruce Tree
House, Balcony House, Sun Temple and Peabody
House, all excavated and accessible. Near the town
of Aztec, in northeastern New Mexico, on the same
highway and not far from Mesa Verde, are the
Aztec ruins now in course of exploration and said
to be of paramount interest.
One of the most beautifully situated prehistoric
ruins in Arizona is that of the Tonto National
Monument, a mile south of the Apache Trail and
only five miles east of Roosevelt Dam. These ruins
are especially easy of access and are located up the
side of a canyon which in itself is a veritable garden
of numerous varieties of beautiful desert cactus.
The light color of these ruins contrast so con-
KICKING UP THE DUST OF AGES 157
' ^^^*"^HBK
In front of "the oldest house" in the United States,
located on a narrow street in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and
said to date from 1530. It is of adobe construction —
mud and strain — and was formerly two stories in height.
A Mexican family makes it its home
spicuously with the dark cave back of them that,
from a distance, they have the appearance of bright
marble structures. Montezuma Castle, south of
Flagstaff, is another ruin of splendid picturesque-
ness. Then there are the easily accessible cliff-
dwellings in Walnut Canyon, only nine miles from
Flagstaff, many ruins of large community houses
near Tempe and Mesa, in the Salt River valley,
and literally thousands of smaller ruins scattered
throughout the entire northern part of New Mexico
and Arizona. \
Indeed, searching for possible automobile routes
in this entrancing "Land of Yesterday" was liter-
ally kicking up the dust of ages along prehistoric
trails, often alongside paths worn ankle deep by the
moccasined feet of countless generations of forgotten
158
KICKING UP THE DUST OF AGES
races. And to think some of our people go to Egypt
and other eastern countries, drawn there by the
magnet of the mystery of the ancient, when we have
in our own country ruins rivalling in interest and
probably in age those of any country on the
Mediterranean. If they want the foreign flavor,
surely the language, costumes and customs of the
swarthy races of our own Southwest can satisfy the
most curious in this respect. But then we, who as
a nation are such live advertisers of our products,
have curiously enough failed to give the wide pub-
licity to our own scenic archaeological and ethno-
logical attractions which they deserve and which
will some day be done. Then the harvest of gold
from the restless roaming tourist will surpass the
combined returns from all the other resources of
the Southwest.
The Canyon of the Salt River, near Roosevelt Dam,
Ariz., is most rugged and picturesque. It is thickly
dotted with giant Saguaro cactus
Sectional Rivalry
IN UNITY there is strength. This old adage
is often lost sight of by rival contenders for
the honor of being located on a particular
trunk-line motor route which may be projected
through a section of country where either one of
two or more communities may offer equal advan-
tages for the location of such a route. While a
healthy and sportsmanlike rivalry is commendable
and frequently causes the building of two routes
where only one was in contemplation, it is unfortu-
nately too often the case that this rivalry assumes
the nature of acrimonious recriminations and causes
such a hatred and intolerable situation that a route
has been located through a territory where its loca-
tion would benefit neither contestant. An award of
this kind, with which I have been identified more
than once, reminds one of the situation some years
ago in Arizona, when Prescott and Tucson fought
so hard and with such bitterness for the location
of the State capital that Phoenix was chosen as a
compromise, thus causing both the contenders to
lose out.
Well-known examples of sectional rivalry be-
tween cities are those of Seattle and Portland,
Minneapolis and St. Paul, Dallas and Fort Worth,
and San Franciscp and Los Angeles. In the latter
case the feeling has spread so that now it is North-
ern California against Southern California, to the
serious detriment of the whole State. It is often
claimed that the Californians are a mighty self-
opinionated lot and rather hold that they are the
159
160 SECTIONAL RIVALRY
tail that wags the dog, meaning the rest of the
United States, and that this sectional pride is about
the only thing upon which the Northern and
Southern Californians agree.
Personally, I think that California as a unit and
an integral part of these great United States would
find it altogether to its advantage to pull together
in all things, as the State has riches and glories
enough to go around and to spare. It can well
afford to reach out the welcome hand of hospitality
to all visitors, whatever part of the State they enter
first, and its citizens, as Californians, not Southern
or Northern Californians, place every facility at
their disposal to visit the many wonderful attrac-
tions all over the State. I think that the develop-
ment of a network of good highways within the
commonwealth, a matter upon which the two sec-
tions seem to agree and cooperate, will eventually
do away with any sectional bitterness and will bring
about a tolerance and unity of general efforts which
must inevitably redound to the great benefit of all
sections.
Texas is so cumbersomely unwieldy that it is not
closely enough knitted together on many matters
that should be made the concern of all parts of the
State. This is largely due to the climatic differ-
ences and consequent conflicting interests of its ex-
treme sections, where the climate ranges from the
sub-tropical of the gulf coast to the severe winters
of the plains. Again the improvement of highways,
which will make intercommunication between the
most remote corners of the vast commonwealth easy
and cause a better understanding of the problems
in each section, will eventually make one entity of
The perpendicular cliffs of the Grand River in Colorado
are frequently split as by a gigantic cleaver
162 SECTIONAL RIVALRY
them all and cause them to present a solid front,
one for all and all for one, when problems of State-
wide importance arise.
Colorado is divided into two parts, the plains and
the "Western Slope," the Rocky Mountains being
thf natural barrier between the two. In addition,
an acrimonious jealousy has in the past existed be-
tween Denver, Colorado Springs and Pueblo, all of
them located on the east slope, where the plains and
mountains meet. It has been claimed that the alti-
tude at which these cities lie causes people to become
high-strung or irritable and thus quarrelsome, and,
as everyone knows, there is no quarrel more bitter
than a family quarrel. However, I am happy to be
able to record that since the advent of the good-
roads era, when nearly all parts of the State on
both sides of the mountains are easily accessible by
motor car, this sectional rivalry and jealousy has
almost entirely disappeared. It has been found that
there is enough tourist traffic to satisfy every town,
and more coming every year; hence Coloradans are
now all putting their shoulders to the same wheel
and heave together for the glory of and to the great
benefit of the State. The splendid roads through
their magnificent mountain region enable tourists to
roam at will and enjoy a climate and scenery which
are sure to induce them to stay longer than at first
intended and to come again. All Colorado needs
to do is to treat its visitors fairly, without greed,
and its attractions will prove more* valuable than
all its mineral wealth.
In the Northwest, the States of Wyoming, Mon-
tana, Idaho and Washington pull together like a
trained team of horses, and this unity of effort is
increasingly effective in bringing to the attention of
SECTIONAL RIVALRY 163
money-spending travelers the many delights of this
region. These efforts are, of course, much strength-
ened by the location of the Yellowstone, Glacier
and Mt. Rainier national parks within this region.
The glad hand of welcome, hospitality and fair
treatment are bringing about results in the North-
west which the gradual expansion of good-roads
systems is sure to increase to such a volume of
tourists traffic that all communities will be bene-
fited. Many sections of the United States could
learn much to their advantage by studying and fol-
lowing the example of the northwestern States.
Now we come to Arizona and New Mexico. No
one can accuse these States of being unprogressive
or inhospitable, in fact, their characteristics are all
to the contrary. Neverthelss it is undeniable that
most communities in these commonwealths must be
called to a large degree somewhat indifferent or at
least lethargic in the matter of exerting special
efforts to make the unquestionably most wonderful
attractions of their States known to the outside
world. They are generally perfectly willing that
outsiders do this work for them or indifferent as
to how it is done so it does not cost themselves spe-
cial efforts or money. In saying this I know
whereof I speak. It is doubtful if Arizona and
New Mexico has had a better friend than myself.
I have for years traveled through their territory,
have written widely of the wonderful attractions,
scenically, archaeologically and otherwise, of these
States in magazines and books. While I have
always met with a welcome, I have, on the other
hand, received little or no cooperation in the
exploitations of their attractions nor in fact noted
any special appreciation of my efforts in their behalf
164
SECTIONAL RIVALRY
These towering sandstone monoliths, near St. Michaels,
Arizona, are called the haystacks
except from the little town of Springerville,
Arizona. The noted writer, Charles F. Lummis,
calls this country "the land of tomorrow," and per-
haps these folks of the southwest will cooperate
"tomorrow." Quien sabe?
On the other hand it is a hopeful omen that
Arizona and New Mexico have made a good start
in the building of roads that are fast making its
SECTIONAL RIVALRY 165
attractions, some of which are unmatched anywhere
on earth, easily accessible to motor tourists. The
wonderful pueblos of the Rio Grande valley, the
interesting prehistoric ruins of community houses
and cliff dwellings, the many Indian tribes with
their ceremonial dances, the Painted Desert, petri-
fied forests, natural monuments, the Grand Canyon,
the National Forests, the magnetic attractions of
the Gila Desert, the Roosevelt and Elephant Butte
irrigation dams, the fine fishing streams and hunting
grounds and numerous other features to be found
in these States, are nowadays within the reach of
any red-blooded motor tourists. To increase the
volume of the lucrative tourist traffic it is only
necessary to make some intelligent and united effort
to call the attention of the world to these attrac-
tions, and if this is done on a liberal scale these
States will find their publicity efforts rewarded by
an unprecedented stream of wealth rolling in on
them.
In this country the example of the New England
States may be studied to good effect by Arizona and
New Mexico, and if they should care to go further
afield for more intensive studies, Italy, France and
Switzerland would present many a wholesome
lesson.
Out West
ONE of the most remarkable observations
that one is forced to make when traveling
around in the eastern part of our country,
is the limited comprehension of the vast size and
resources of the United States, often displayed by-
people whom one really expects to have a wider
knowledge of the subject. I do not refer to the
army of Americans of wealth, who can glibly tell
you all about even the more remote corners of
Europe, but who have never seen California, the
Grand Canyon or the wonders of our National
Parks, and either look rather bored at being told
about them or look as if a recital of their beauties
and wonders must be patiently endured or merely
considered one of the expected "boasts" of their
countrymen. One of the good things following the
world war was the fact that as Europe was closed
to these folks they were literally compelled, being
people of leisure with few serious objects in life
aside from traveling, to visit regions in the United
States which they heretofore had thought too
arduous to approach.
This circumstance has brought an appreciation of
their own wonderful country that has made them
at the same time prouder Americans and staunch
advocates of the "See America first" gospel. It is,
however, the solid "middle class" people (as they
are sometimes called), the farmer and tradesman,
that frequently show such gross ignorance of the
United States that one wonders at it in these days
of compulsory schooling. It would be ridiculous
166
OUT WEST 167
if it were not such an evidence of smug indifference.
Of course these conditions will mend in proportion
as these people acquire the ownership of a motor
car. This blessing of modern times, in my opinion,
is proving itself the greatest educator in history, be-
cause its use compels acquiring knowledge, first of
one's own section, then of one's own State and
finally, as the network of good roads spreads, of
one's entire country, besides broadening one's vision
of life and appreciation of the problems facing other
regions outside of one's own. This education will
have a powerful influence on our politics and tend
to cultivate toleration and sympathy, and at the
same time it will wipe out sectionalism.
I well remember when once in the early days
of motordom, the time when roads were all dirt
roads and one spent more than half of his time on
his back underneath the car, and thirty miles was
considered quite a days ride, I stopped at a farm-
house in eastern Connecticut to borrow some tools
from a farmer, which I needed in tinkering with the
car, the conversation turned on "Out West." I
mentioned having traveled through our western
states, but, of course, not in those early days, by
motor. The farmer, rather conscious of some
traveling himself, remarked that he also had been
"Out West," to visit a brother that a generation
before had moved there. More for the purpose of
seeming polite than for any real interest in the sub-
ject, I asked him what part of the west he had
visited. To my utter amazement he proudly said,
"in York State, near Utica."
As a matter of fact this man was quite a traveler
when one compared him with the thousands upon
thousands of sturdy Americans who, at least up to
168 OUT WEST
very recent times, had never been outside of their
own county, to say nothing of their State. Ingrown
sectionalism and indifference to the welfare or needs
of fellow citizens beyond their own narrow sphere
of vision is traceable directly to this condition. Of
all the modern methods of communication, tele-
graph, telephone, rural delivery of mail, interurban
electric cars, railroad, newspapers and magazines,
the strongest and most potent antidote to ignorance
is the motor car, because it teaches while it gives
pleasure and health, and thus is "easy to take."
Convict Labor
OUR immensely fast-growing demand for
improved highways which call for the ex-
penditure of hundreds of millions of dollars
annually, has caused such a scarcity of labor, of the
class which can be utilized for this purpose, that
many of the States in the Union are using convicts
to help fill the pressing want. In spite of the fact
that no State has enough inmates in its penal insti-
tutions, who can properly be used for roadwork, to
affect the labor market, labor organizations have in
some States selfishly adopted the rule of the dog
in the manger and through politics prevented the
utilization of convict labor on highway work or
other public improvements. This stand not only
does not benefit these organizations, but retards the
construction of highways important to the State and
deprives fellow human beings, often doing penance
for relatively slight offences against society, of the
outdoor life and healthy exercise that help to purify
mind and body and fit them for better life when
their terms are expired.
There are two methods employed in applying
convict labor to roadwork, the honor system, best
exemplified in Colorado, where it was first intro-
duced, and the system where the convicts work in
striped suits, pften weighted down by chains and
guarded by men with cocked rifles, and herded into
wheeled cages at night like wild beasts.
Let us first consider how the honor system, so
idealistically conceived with humanitarian purposes
in view, really works in practice. Warden Tynan,
169
170 CONVICT LABOR
of the Colorado State penitentiary at Canon City,
must be given the credit of first using the honor sys-
tem. Much needed improvements of highways
across the mountain passes were so delayed and
hampered by lack of labor that the State resolved
to try the application of Mr. Tynan's scheme.
Briefly this consisted in allowing short term pris-
oners and trustees the privilege of living in healthy
camps, working in the bracing pure air, using ordi-
nary civilian clothes in place of the degrading
prison uniforms, laboring without armed guards,
and in addition being allowed a small daily wage
for their work, thus laying up something against
the day of release. From the standpoint of the
State this accomplished much to be desired: the
carrying on of needed improvements, making the
convict earn his keep in place of being an expense to
the commonwealth, and improving his morale so
that when released he will be a better citizen and
not as liable to again offend against the statute laws.
From the standpoint of the convict the outdoor life,
the escape from the confining prison walls, the
healthy exercise, good food and the confidence
shown in him by this unguarded and un-uniformed
life make him see life in brighter colors and create
better intentions for the future. As a result there
has been practically no efforts to escape, and in the
one or two cases which have occurred, the culprits
who broke their given words in this respect have,
when caught, been ostracized by their fellow pris-
oners and deprived of the privilege of further out-
door work. This punishment has proved more
potent than solitary confinement and other harsh
means of handling recalcitrant offenders against
CONVICT LABOR 171
prison rules. I have on occasions visited Colorado
convict road camps and joined the men at their
meals. Their freedom from restraint or mental de-
pression was most noticeable. They acted and
talked naturally like free men. The benefits of
this system was so evident that it needed no obtruse
or statistical arguments to convince anyone.
Now let us look at the other method of using
convict labor as practised in some of the older south-
ern states. The picture here is of a very different
character. On one of my trips of investigation of
routes to Florida some years ago, I encountered sev-
eral convict road camps in three different states. At
one of these camps a white man, the only one in
the camp aside from the guards, was working among
a gang of burly negroes. Upon inquiry I learned
that his offense had been the terrible crime of get-
ting drunk. And for this he, a Southerner with a
Southerner's prejudice of acknowledging equality or
associating with negroes, was made to suffer the, to
him, unspeakable indignity of working in a chain
gang of black men. After talking with him for
some moments, I was convinced that this galling
treatment had caused such a resentment in his other-
wise normal mind that he stood in danger of becom-
ing a confirmed criminal and foe of society when he
again had his freedom.
Among the dozen negro convicts at work at this
camp five were serving life sentences, and conse-
quently had no, fear of taking chances of getting
away, as they would be no worse off if they failed
of success in the attempt. This gang was served
with water by a diminutive negro boy, apparently
some ten or eleven years old and, it seems almost
unbelievable, this little chap had not only iron chains
172 CONVICT LABOR
Some of the Southern States could well adopt the honor
system of working convicts on the roads, thus doing
away with public exhibition of the disgrace of fellow
human beings.
running from a metal belt around his waist to iron
rings about both his ankles, but carried a heavy iron
ball, which was chained to his wrist on one hand,
while with the other he carried the waterbucket. I
learned upon inquiry that he was so treated because
he was a confirmed thief, or at least, as one guard
put it, "liable to pilfer anything." Many of the
prisoners had the waist-to-ankle chains, and all were
dressed in conspicuous black and white striped suits
and caps. Guards with shouldered rifles patrolled
the roadside. At night these unfortunate beings,
having served as a show for all passers along the
road during the day, were confined in stout iron-
barred cages on wheels which were moved along as
the work progressed.
The contrast between the two methods of util-
izing convict labor here described is overwhelming.
Both in application and effect they differ as light
from darkness, as virtue from depravity.
At the Grand Canyon
SIX years ago I visited the Grand Canyon of
Arizona for the first time in a motor car.
At that time only an occasional local car
from Flagstaff and one or two long-distance cars
had ever been there. There were no garage accom-
modations and no gasoline or oil to be had there at
that time. As I did not care to leave my car out-
doors over night on account of various valuable
instruments of a scientific character, 1 persuaded
the manager of El Tovar Hotel to arrange for its
accommodation in the carriage barn.
When I urged the manager to take steps to pro-
vide an up-to-date garage as motorists were sure to
come in ever increasing numbers in my footsteps, or
rather tire-tracks, he maintained that the manage-
W ' hile ours ivas one of the first long-distance cars to
visit the Hopi House at Grand Canyon, Ariz., it is now
visited by literally thousands of cars yearly
173
174 AT THE GRAND CANYON
ment did not care for that kind of patronage, and
anyway there would not be many motorists braving
the wilds of Arizona.
Two years later I again came to the Grand Can-
yon by motor car, and what did I find? A large
garage with modern equipment, which had that
summer housed over twelve hundred cars. Fur-
thermore, a large extension was being constructed
to take care of the increasing tourist traffic arriving
by motor car. And the management was mighty
glad to see them coming too.
Since the Grand Canyon has been made a
National Park and will be connected with the
National Old Trails Road with a good highway
swarms of motor tourists will in coming years
annually visit this most impressive natural scenery
on the face of the globe, especially after some way
has been found to pump water from the Colorado
River in the bottom of the chasm to the rim, so that
motor car campers may be properly cared for.
Hazing the Lord
ON ONE of my many trips across the United
States we were accompanied by an Eng-
lishman who was much interested in gather-
ing "impressions" of the United States. He was a
quiet, somewhat reserved young gentleman of very
precise manners and was by us promptly called the
Lord, for short. Out in Kansas some of the local
people played a few innocent jokes on him, which
he took in the best manner possible. Among these
were such instances as inducing him to give a fourth
of July speech to a large audience in a public park
of one of the towns and allowing him the valued
privilege of jerking open the door of the den whence
the "usual" badger was supposed to rush out and
engage in mortal combat with a "fierce" mongrel, a
rather hackneyed practical joke practised on tyro
tenderfeet.
Down in Arizona he ventured the remark in a
conversation with some local people that he had
surely expected the West to be more "woolly," and
that so far he had not seen a single one of the
desperadoes, road-agents, gamblers and cut-throats
which he had read about, and which were expected
to roam about freely and ply their trade with
impunity. The good people of Arizona were not
going to let such a blot on their reputation remain,
and staged a regular wild-west holdup, which was
successfully pulled off in the southeast part of the
state. In the most approved fashion two masked
horsemen rode out from behind large boulders
alongside the trail in a desolate section, and with
175
176 HAZING THE LORD
leveled "six-guns" demanded "your money or your
life." Of course everybody was in the joke but the
Lord, so everybody elevated their hands, and like
good sports, stood for having their loose change
abstracted from their pockets.
When the car arrived at the next town it was
met by a committee, among whom were the two
"robbers." At the hotel bar the Englishman's
money, a modest sum, was freely spent on the
visitors and everybody was happy, none more so
than our foreign guest who told most circumstan-
tially of the adventure, and cabled an account of it
to London. He never did learn the real facts of
the case, and even today is of the opinion that after
all the west is some country for red-blooded expe-
riences.
Colorado Mutton
ARRIVING at a Colorado ranch on one of
my trips, the owner apologized for having
nothing in the house but mutton to serve
us. We assured him that mutton was certainly all
right, and that we had brought our appetities with
us. When the meal was served I discovered that
the "mutton" was venison, and as I realized that it
was the closed season for shooting deer, I praised
the mutton and simulated ignorance of the real
character of the food which, of course, was just
what we were all expected to do. Not so our driver,
who kept insisting that he had never tasted such
mutton, and that it was the best he had ever eaten,
but wanted to know what breed of sheep produced
such juicy, palatable meat. Seeing that he would
not be satisfied till he had the information safely
tucked away in his head, the rancher told him, with-
out a smile, that it was Rocky Mountain sheep.
The driver often spoke of the delicious mutton pro-
duced in Colorado from their mountain sheep.
177
The Queen of the Desert
AT ONE of the small towns on the National
Old Trails Road in the Mohave Desert,
there lived a curious character, an old wo-
man, generally called "Mama, queen of the desert."
She was one of the pioneer "desert rats," who came
in with a prospecting party and settled in a small
shanty town near the railroad. She opened a small
store and looked after the occasional traveler who
ventured into or came back from the Death Valley
region, a mythical Eldorado, where gold was sup-
posed to be plenty as berries on an elderberry bush,
but whence most of the hardy prospectors, who
hazarded the dangers of the trail into it, came back
empty handed and often half demented with the
sufferings endured in this well-named region. Many
did not come back at all, and their bleached bones
are whitening the floor of this terrible country, more
than two hundred feet below sea level. To those
who came back "Mama" was the good Samaritan,
and in spite of her uncouth ways and careless garb
was to them a glorified being.
One night we arrived at this little settlement
about ten o'clock, hungry and weary after a hot
day's ride through the desert. As we wiggled our
way through the deep sand of the main (and only)
street, there appeared in the full glare of our head-
lights a woman, barefooted and calico-mother-
hubbard-dressed, who stopped in the middle of the
track and kept waving her arms excitedly. This
proved to be the "queen of the desert," of whom I
had heard. She informed us that we had better stop
178
THE QUEEN OF THE DESERT
179
No indeed, there is no snoiv on the ground here, only
white alkali 'which covers the surface of one of the dry
lake beds in the Moha<ve Desert in California
over for the night, and that she could furnish us
with good beds. She evidently was not going to
let anyone get by without at least being apprised of
the accommodations available.
Assuring her that her hospitality was appreciated
and would be accepted, I inquired about something
to eat. To our disappointment she said there was
no chance of appeasing our hunger until next day,
when what she called "the hash-house," otherwise
the restaurant, opened. I maintained that would not
do at all, and "guessed" I could find something to
eat somewhere, aside from the crackers and cheese
which she finally offered us from the stock in the
store. Evidently feeling that she knew her ground,
she offered to bet that I could not, the stake being
free beds or beds at double rate, according to who
should win.
Without taking up this sporting proposition, I
approached a house, from the window of which
shone the only light apparent in the town. This
proved to be the railroad station with a telegraph
operator on duty. Explaining to him our predica-
ment he handed me a key and told me it would
180 THE QUEEN OF THE DESERT
unlock the third house down the street. Here we
would find an oil-burner cook stove and food in the
pantry, ham, eggs, rolls, jam, and other good things.
We were welcome to help ourselves and he only
regretted he could not leave his post to come over
and cook it for us in his batchelor home.
"Mama" seemed much surprised at the result of
my foraging expedition. While she went to prepare
the beds we cooked a very satisfying meal in the
home of this true gentleman of the wide places, who
had shown such hospitality to strangers. He
absolutely refused any recompense for the food con-
sumed. We could only pay him with our thanks.
Next morning "Mama," like a true sport, refused
pay for her beds, because she had lost the wager,
even though it had not been accepted by me. No
argument could induce her to change her decision
in this respect.
The Mohave Desert is not, like the Great Salt Lake
Desert or Death Galley, merely a great sandy tuaste.
It is studded laith many varieties of vegetation, such as
the creosote bushes and Yucca cactus shown here
Queen Victoria
WHILE passing through Georgia on the
Dixie Highway, we put up at the only
hotel in one of the smaller towns. My
wife inquired of the clerk if there was a chance
to have some laundry done the next day, which we
had planned to spend at this town. She was
assured that it would be promptly arranged. Early
next morning the clerk sent word up that Queen
Victoria was down stairs and should he send her up.
Having for the moment forgotten about the
laundry, and thinking that this was supposed to be
a joke at my instigation, my wife said she would be
much honored to have her majesty grace our humble
quarters with her presence.
In a few minutes a knock sounded on the door
and my wife swung it wide open. There stood a
coal-black negro woman with a wide grin showing
gleaming white teeth and the white of her eyes shin-
ing like two stars. Clutching her dress, one on
each side were two tiny pickaninnies some four or
five years old, curiosity and wonder depicted on their
curly-topped little black faces. The woman said
she was Queen Victoria, the laundress. The two
kids were twins and named Abraham Lincoln and
Jefferson Davis, while upon inquiry it was learned
that the husband's name was George Washington.
These were all given names, the family name being
Munroe. Truly a historic and distinguished family,
I should say.
181
Tickling the Carburetor
IN MAKING our way up a water-bar-infested
steep road in the Green mountains of Vermont,
we overtook a small car which was bucking its
way in spasms, leaps and bounds ahead of us. At
a place where the road curved, I noticed an old
gentleman at the steering wheel, while a woman
was breathlessly running beside the car, the hood of
which was thrown back on one side. She had her
arm stretched in under the hood and had quite a
task keeping up with the erratic pace of the "horse-
less carriage," anxiety being plainly depicted on her
face, which was grimy from perspiration and lubri-
cating grease. Having attained the top of the grade
she sat down at the roadside to rest, and I asked
her why on earth she was doing the marathon and
acrobatics on such a hot day and on such steep
ground. With the most amusing expression of
annoyance on her face she said that she did not see
that the reason was any of my business, but if I
wanted particularly to know, it was no family
secret, and she was only "tickling" the carburetor.
Later I saw the same pair leaving from the front
of a barn which served as a garage in a small town,
the old gentleman with a grim and determined ex-
pression of do or die on his face and his hands
grasping the steering wheel like grim death till his
knuckles showed white, while the little woman was
cranking away for dear life, till she finally suc-
ceeded in starting "the pesky thing."
182
Handshaking
THE Pueblo Indian either in order to show
his friendliness or to indicate his familiarity
with the white man's ways, I am not sure
which, always insists on shaking hands when first
meeting a white person, though I have never noticed
him practice this custom among his own people.
Unfortunately, a great many individuals of various
tribes inhabiting the twenty-six scattered Pueblos .of
the Southwest are inflicted with trachoma, a con-
tagious and reputedly incurable eye disease. For
this reason all visitors to one of these little self-
governing republics should use extreme care not to
indulge in handshaking with the inhabitants pro-
miscuously.
On one occasion when we visited one of the
Pueblos near Santa Fe, the cacique after vigorously
shaking my gloved hand, went up to the car and
stretched out his hand to my wife, who had not
yet had time to put on her gloves when she saw him
coming. Catching my eye she tucked her hands
under the lap robe and made the excuse that she
had a bruised finger, a necessary subterfuge in this
case, as the man was nearly blind with trachoma.
Most of his family were similarly afflicted, and
they all wanted to shake hands. We had to use
great care in our trips, which extended to all the
Indian tribes in New Mexico and Arizona, and
almost everywhere we found the red-lidded filmy
eyes which indicate the presence of this dangerous
disease. However, by taking proper precautions in
the way of gloved hands and the use of disinfectants,
the danger of infection may be avoided.
183
Prospectors
ONE of the most interesting characters one
meets in the arid regions of the southwest
is the prospector. He is nearly always the
personification of sunny optimism, especially the
confirmed specimen of the species. I have spent
many a pleasant evening at the campfire listening
to the tales of fortune "almost found" by some of
the old dyed-in-the-wool roamers of the desert.
At one time we pitched camp at Winter's well
on the Harquahala Plain between Phoenix and the
Colorado river, and as we were busy about getting
our supper ready, there came into the light of the
campfire a diminutive burro laden down with grub
sacks, picks and shovels. Immediately following
was an old man of three score and ten years or
more, who asked to share our fire with us, as the
custom is in remote regions. Being assured that he
was welcome, he busied himself preparing his frugal
meal and was delighted when we offered him some
fruit and spuds, as potatoes are generally called in
that country.
After our repast and with the pipes drawing well,
the atmosphere very naturally called for tales of his
wanderings, and he proved a very interesting recon-
teur. For more than forty-five years he had roamed
the mountain and desert regions between Canada
and Mexico, and claimed to have located several
fine mines, but always somebody else got away with
the big fortunes made by these strikes, while he only
received a few hundred dollars. However, he had
a strong hunch that there was gold at a certain -place
184
PROSPECTORS
185
not far distant and was sure that he would be able
to uncover it, and this time he would take care that
no one cheated him out of it. Would I be interested
in backing him in his search, it would only take a
modest sum, a few hundred dollars? Having re-
ceived many similar invitations on other occasions
Northern New Mexico makes ideal camping around, pro-
vided you carry enough water with you for your night's
stop. There is plenty of wood available and the climate
is dry and bracing
to grub-stake some of these consistent dreamers, who
had sure things and would inevitably locate them
"tomorrow," I found an excuse to decline the flat-
tering offer. He did not seem the least dis-
appointed at this, but regaled us with stories of dis-
covery of ores, boom camps, the wild life in some
of these and of hardships of the trail until a late
hour. Next morning he found his hobbled burro,
snugged his outfit, and with a pleasant smile on
his wrinkled old face, bade us good-bye.
186
PROSPECTORS
1 have often wondered if the reaper perhaps over-
took him, all alone, among the hills of the desert,
without a chance of human companionship in his
last hour. It is pretty certain that he would pass
out still searching for the yellow metal which he
always hoped to find "tomorrow." I am quite con-
fident that the anticipation of the search meant more
to him and was more satisfying than the realization
of a find could possibly be.
Contrary to a natural expectation the Petrified Forest
of Arizona has no standing trees. The beautifully
colored, agatized trees and stumps are all prostrate on
the ground. Some of the trees are of gigantic proportions
Sharp Shooting
PASSING through Wyoming on one of our
trips we saw an unusual number of coyotes
but luck seemed to run against me, either they
were too far away or I missed them though I will
admit I had on two occasions a fair chance of a good
shot at them. As I am not altogether a bad shot
with a rifle, though no prize-winning marksman,
this puzzled me until I discovered that the sight
on my rifle had been bent in some accidental way.
However my good wife chided me considerably over
my poor marksmanship and, though I appeared to
take no notice of it, this nettled me. After straight-
ening the bent sight, of which I made no mention, I
felt sure of retrieving my lost reputation.
While we were stopping for a bite of lunch in
the shade of a butte, I discovered not far away, at
least within easy range, the ears of a coyote just
showing above a small bush. Grabbing my rifle I
fired right into the middle of the bush. As I saw
no animal running away from it I felt certain
of having found the mark. Friend wife inquired
somewhat sarcastically, I thought, what on earth I
had shot at this time. I invited her to come along
and I would show her. Far be it from me to boast,
but I guessed I was not such a dub at shooting after
all. Blythely she came along, and on reaching the
bush there was mister prairiewolf, duly stretched
out breathing his last, but imagine my mortifica-
tion, upon discovering on closer examination, only a
mangy coyote pup with one foot caught in a steel
trap. The poor beast could not get away and was
187
188
SHARP SHOOTING
Overlooking "Hell's Half Acre," a vast hole in the
volcanic ash deposits on Powder River in Wyoming
compelled to sit still while serving as an easy target.
While of course I was glad to have been the means
of putting the suffering animal out of its misery, I
did not relish the laugh my companions had at my
expense, especially as the subject was, as I thought
unnecessarily and with undue relish, brought up for
many a day afterwards.
A Town's Disgrace
AT A SMALL town in one of the western
states, which I shall refrain from naming,
where we arrived quite late one evening
after an arduous day's battle with an exceedingly
rough trail, we were very glad indeed to find a
rather fine appearing hotel, though we were com-
pelled to go to a restaurant for our supper on
account of the late hour. After getting my com-
panions assigned to their rooms and the baggage
brought up, I strolled around the lobby and adjoin-
ing rooms for a night-smoke before retiring.
Hanging on the wall here and there, among heads
of deer, elk, buffalo, mountain lion and bighorn
sheep, I discovered several pictures of such an in-
decent and lewd character that in utter disgust and
more than a little angry, I remonstrated with the
man behind the hotel counter for the brazen exhibi-
tion of such chromos, adding that 1 thought the
town as a whole shared with the proprietor of the
hotel the responsibility and disgrace by allowing
them to hang on the wall of a public hostelry.
He leeringly told me that he was the proprietor,
and what was I going to do about it. He dared me
to touch them and "guessed" they would stay where
they were as long as he wished it, as he was the
town marshal and knew his six-gun. I told him I
did not intend to take them down myself, but that
I would make it my business to see that they were
taken down and destroyed. Next morning I was
waited on by a committee of town-people and asked
to forget the occurrence. The hotel proprietor
189
It's no use talking. Black gumbo, when iuet, toil I almost
make a church deacon swear like an army mule skinner.
Of course Weed chains are indispensable
A TOWN'S DISGRACE 191
they had locked in his room, as he had come to the
conclusion, after much partaking of his own "snake
poison," that nothing would satisfy him that glor-
ious sunny morning but my blood. Yes sir, only
real gore would appease his insulted self-esteem.
Telling the committee that I would promise to
make no mention of the matter to the state author-
ities only on condition that they, in my presence,
would remove the pictures from the wall and
destroy them, they assured me that such an act
would be unlawful, and anyway, the town marshal
really was a dead shot, so they thought they had
better not try it.
When a few days later I arrived at the state
capital, I called on the governor, with whom I was
well acquainted, from having made several good
roads boosting trips with him, and exacted from him
a direct promise that the attorney-general would
take steps to proceed immediately against the hotel
proprietor for maintaining a public nuisance. I
learned later that this was done and the offending
pictures destroyed. I should not wonder but that
the hotel man, who had to pay a fine for his offense
against public decency, has ever since had one eye
trained on the trail and his finger on the trigger.
However, I have had no further occasion to visit
that corner of the out-of-doors, as I became so pre-
judiced against that particular community that 1
did not favor establishing a motor route through it
Gates
IN Western Texas some of the cattle ranches are
of enormous size. Since the day of the arrival
of the barbwire, these ranches have nearly all
been fenced and subdivided into large pastures. The
day of the open range with its romance extolled in
song and prose is past. To give an idea of the size
of some of these fenced tracts, it is sufficient to say
that one of them, near Midland, is one hundred
and sixty-five miles across in one direction.
Some of the main trunk line routes traverse sev-
eral of these baronial estates and, as it of course is
out of the question in that sparsely settled country
to incur the expense of fencing both sides of the
road, even though it may be a graded and culverted
county highway, the routes are crossed at frequent
A fair specimen of one of the one hundred and fifty-five
gates to pass through on the route between San Antonio
and El Paso, Texas
192
GATES
193
intervals by fences between separate individual
pastures. This condition necessitates gates. The
gates are of all kinds of patterns, from the primitive
so-called Montana wire gate to more elaborate con-
traptions that may be opened from the driver's 'seat
by pulling a handle, depending from a long beam
or be bumped open with the front tires of a motor
car.
On one of my trips between El Paso and San
Antonio, we passed through a total number of one
hundred and fifty-five gates, but then the distance
is over seven hundred miles. Even then we
traversed barely one-half of the width of this em-
pire of a commonwealth. Of late years a new way
to pass through a wire fence by motor car has been
devised. This is called a cattle guard and consists
of two troughs, placed apart a distance equal to the
tread of a motor car. These troughs are placed
The Texas method of passing through wire fences ivith-
out the use of gates. A most practical and timesaving
device
194 GATES
above a pit dug directly on the line of the fence and
a little to one side of the gate, so as to leave this
available for wagon traffic. The fence is cut away
entirely where the pit and the troughs cross it, thus
leaving a free passage for motor cars crossing the
pit on the troughs, while the pit prevents cattle from
passing from one pasture to the other. These cattle
guards are a great convenience.
Historic Markers
ON THE National Old Trails Route there
are two very interesting markers. While
here and there along the route where it
crosses the actual path of the famous old Santa Fe
Trail, substantial commemoration stone monu-
ments have been erected by the Daughters of the
American Revolution in connection with the respec-
tive state authorities, it is the two terminal monu-
ments which really are of special interest.
The first monument, at the beginning of the trail,
is located at Old Franklin, Missouri, just across the
Missouri River from Booneville. From this place
the first trading caravans started on the long trek
across the plains. At first in 1812, only pack-mules
were used. In 1822 the first wagons, often drawn
by twenty-four oxen, were driven over the trail.
The journey in these early days was exceedingly
dangerous. Frequent attacks by hostile Indian
tribes on the caravans, often resulted in the mas-
sacre of their entire personnel and the loss of the
whole expedition. Finally the Indians got so bad
that the government sent troops of cavalry along as
a protection and established forts all along the line.
The ruins of these forts and stockades are still in
evidence at many places through Kansas. One of
the places where these Indian attacks most often
occured was at the crossing of Pawnee Creek.
Many bloodcurdling accounts of these attacks by
savage bands have been recorded, but many more
are not part of recorded history, as often no one
remained to tell the tale.
195
196 HISTORIC MARKERS
The old trail is redolent of the deeds of such
pioneers as Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, Lucian Max-
well, Dick Wooten, and later Buffalo Bill. At
many places in southeastern Colorado may to this
day be seen the grassgrown trail, over two hundred
feet wide, with numerous deep and parallel wagon
tracks, made during the heyday of the traffic over
the route in the fifties. The building of the Santa
Fe railroad in 1872 caused the abandonment of the
trail as a trading route. Millions of dollars worth
of goods was transported over it during its existence,
and it once reached even beyond Santa Fe, down to
Chihuahua, Mexico.
In the old plaza at Santa Fe is the last and
terminal monument of this historic route, marking
its end at the old fonda, or hostelry where the
travelers found a haven of rest after their arduous
journey of some eleven hundred miles through a
dangerous country. The old fonda is now burned,
and in the smoke of the fire disappeared one of the
most historic edifices in the United States. Across
on the other side of the plaza is the governors palace,
built in 1608, on the site of an old Pueblo ruin.
This venerable building has housed Spanish, Pueblo,
Mexican and American governors for three hun-
dred years. Santa Fe is the second oldest city in
the United States, being antedated by a few years
by St. Augustine, Florida.
Gentlemen of the Press
ONE OF the things that cannot be avoided
by a man whose work is subject to public
notice is being interviewed by reporters,
and of this I have naturally had my full share. Of
course it is natural that local papers are keen to
print things which intimately affect the affairs of
their communities, and my passage through their
section would generally be regarded as live news
and frequently featured with display headings, the
importance of the "dope" usually varying with the
size of the town in which the paper was published.
Generally speaking, I have found the gentlemen
of the press keen, well posted and educated men,
who would present the facts as related to them with,
of course, their own view on how far these would
have a bearing on local affairs.
Having arrived at one of the larger cities of the
southwest a few years ago I was, as a matter of
course, called on by representatives of the several
local newspapers. After dictating to them a state-
ment of the facts in connection with my trip through
their section of the country on that particular occa-
sion, I requested that care be used in quoting me
literally. In justice to them I will say that this
was done, but some of them could not refrain from
giving expression to their impression of my per-
sonality. Thus one would describe me as burned
by the desert heat till my face was the color of an
old cavalry saddle, but my eyes were clear and
kindly, besides which I had the warm hand clasp
of a true friend. These compliments were, of
197
198
GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS
U f>on arriving at Los Angeles, after surveying three
transcontinental motor routes for the American Auto-
mobile Association in 1912, it seemed mighty good to re-
ceive a stack of letters from friends back home
course, very nice and much appreciated. But to
offset them another said that I was a highwayman
whose deeds were known throughout the land, and
still another made the assertion that almost every
city in the west was looking for me.
Evidently someone had called the attention of
the reporter who called me a highwayman to the
possibility of a double interpretation of the name
he had bestowed on me with such good intentions.
At any rate he referred to the matter in a paragraph
the following day, in which he said that, of course,
everybody knew that I was not a highwayman in
the wrong sense of that term, but that I was a road
agent.
Bad Intentions
IN SPITE of my long rambles on rubber tires
throughout the United States, very frequently
into remote regions reputed to be the hide-outs
of renegades, into desolate areas only visited by
nomadic Indian tribes or into lands where only
negroes inhabit vast swampy tracts, or sections
where only Mexicans dwell, I have never been
molested or even seen the sign of a suspicious desire
to get unduly acquainted with my outfit except on
one solitary occasion and that, as may be easily real-
ized by those who have roamed the great out-of-
doors, occurred in a city, the safe breeding place
for crimes and criminals.
While we were stopping for a day and a night at
a well-known hotel in one of the larger central west
cities, my wife had occasion to have a check for
several hundred dollars cashed, and used the money
that day in a business transaction. When we were
ready to pull away from in front of the hotel the
next morning a young fellow with the appearance
of a mechanic, came up to the car and presented
himself as being the "trouble-man" or road mechanic
from the factory which manufactured the particular
car which I was using that season. He wanted to
know if the car was functioning all right in every
respect. If not, he would be glad to make adjust-
ments and fix anything which might be wrong with
it. It so happened that the car had been losing
power and needed carburetor adjustment, and I told
him to go ahead and fix it. He claimed that as he
was going on to our next town anyway, probably he
199
200 BAD INTENTIONS
had better ride over with us and thus be able to
make the adjustments while the car was in actual
operation. As this was unquestionably the best way
to have the adjustment made, we managed to make
room for him in the tonneau seat alongside my wife.
A few miles out I invited him to drive the car
for awhile so he could get "the feel" of it, and thus
better determine the exact nature of the trouble to
be corrected inasmuch as, of course, he was so spe-
cially well acquainted with this make of car. How-
ever, he did not accept the invitation, claiming he
could "listen to the motor" better if not at the
wheel. This aroused my suspicion to some extent,
especially as he showed a lack of knowledge of the
factory where the car was made, and acquaintance
with the officers and heads of departments of the
organization manufacturing it. My wife's suspicion
was also aroused, and she made a point of explain-
ing to me in the hearing of the stranger just how
she had disposed of the money she had drawn the
previous day. Her story, coupled with my getting
my rifle unlimbered, ostensibly in order to be ready
for any prowling coyote, evidently had the desired
effect, because when we reached the trolley line on
the outskirts of the next town the "mechanic" said
he would take the electric car, and on his way in call
at a certain garage, where he had an appointment to
call, but would meet us at Jones & Smith's estab-
lishment, the agents for our make of car, and there
make adjustment on our carburetor, as parts were
available there.
As we expected there was no Jones & Smith in
the town, nor was our make of car handled in that
community by anyone.
The Sandstorm
IN SEVERAL sections of the southwest, where
the annual precipitation is very light and where
strong winds have for ages corroded rocks,
cliffs and veritable mountains, there are large areas
of sandy wastes. When an unusually strong and
protracted gale prevails during the period of a long
drought, the sand is swept up by the strong air cur-
rent and carried along with it, sometimes for a great
many miles. This phenomenon is what is called a
sandstorm. At times these become more than
annoying, even positively dangerous as the sand-
laden air darkens the sky and like a heavy fog makes
objects, only a short distance away, invisible. Not
only does such a storm fill one's eyes and throat with
its gritty particles, but it will sometimes entirely
obliterate a trail or a road, making it difficult for
one to trace one's route, besides making progress on
rubber tires exceedingly arduous, if not entirely im-
possible.
People who have had occasion to travel between
El Paso and Alamogordo in New Mexico, or be-
tween Mecca and Brawley in the Salton Sea basin
of California during or after a sandstorm, will easily
recognize this description. Residents around River-
side and San Bernardino, California, are often much
annoyed by dark sandstorms coming over the moun-
tains from the' Mohave Desert, and so frequently
are dwellers along the foothills of the Rocky Moun-
tains in southern Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Oregon
and Idaho.
The arid region of the Navaho and Hopi Indian
201
202
THE SANDSTORM
reservations in Arizona are especially subject to
sandstorms. The white sands or shifting gypsum
beds north of El Paso are as unstable as the drifts
along the North Carolina coasts. The yellow sand-
beds in the Imperial Valley of California along the
Southern Pacific railroad are continuously encroach-
ing on the railroad track burying telegraph poles,
and every few years necessitate the moving of the
track further east.
On one occasion when in the neighborhood of
Walsenburg on the way from Denver to Trinidad,
Colorado, we encountered one of these storms of an
unusual severity. Our eyes, nostrils and throats
soon became so inflamed that \ve had to cover our
faces with handkerchiefs and stop the car, awaiting
the abatement of the gale. When this occurred,
These tracks of the pathfinder's car s/ww the difficulty
often encountered when traversing the sands of the
Painted Desert on the way to the Hopi Indian pueblos in
Arizona. The winds cause the formation of ripples like
tiny waves of water
THE SANDSTORM 203
after a lapse of a few hours, our car was embedded
in sand to the hubs, our motor and inside of the
tonneau literally covered with sand, and the road
entirely obliterated. During the thickest part of
the storm it was impossible to see a car-length in
any direction, and when I left the car to investigate
the condition of the ground ahead, I had to shout
loudly in order to have the answering cries guide
me back, though I was not more than a hundred feet
away. It took us an entire day to shovel our way
clear of the drifted area, in the very center of which
we occupied a position like an island in an ocean.
Sn ip in g Grin go es
DURING the turbulent conditions in Mexico
in the years following the downfall of
President Porfirio Diaz, the iron-willed dic-
tator who had held the many disturbing elements in
leash for more than thirty years, and brought our
neighboring republic a measure of prosperity which
upset its equilibrium, the borders along Arizona,
New Mexico and Texas were subjected to raids by
the marauding bands of various "revolutionary
leaders." These raids were either instigated by
bandit chiefs like Villa, for mere plunder, or by
unscrupulous military or political chiefs who were
anxious to bring trouble on Madero or Carranza by
having the United States step in and put a stop to
these practices.
Pershing's campaign in Mexico was caused by
such a raid on Columbus, New Mexico, and occa-
sional punitive expeditions were made by our
cavalry, crossing the Rio Grande from Texas into
Chihuahua in pursuit of raiders, who had harrassed
the Texas border, stealing cattle and occasionally
murdering ranchers. At this time I was traveling
along the border of Texas to inspect a possible route
for a proposed highway paralleling the Rio Grande.
While following a poor road between Del Rio
and Eagle Pass, skirting the river very closely and
being flanked on the north by a chain of low hills,
we heard a rifle shot across on the Mexican side of
the river but, as we discovered no one in sight among
the trees on the other bank, we did not concern our-
selves much with the occurrence. However, in a
204
SNIPING GRINGOES 205
few moments another shot sounded, and this time
I heard the bullet hit a nearby sandbank with a
thud and then first realized that we were the targets,
and that someone was trying to snipe us. We
speeded up and drove away at our best clip, pur-
sued by a few more shots which, owing to too great
a range or too poor markmanship, failed to reach us.
On this trip we encountered every few miles one
of our border patrols who would stop us and
search our car for arms and ammunition, as quan-
tities of these were suspected of being surreptitiously
smuggled across the border by innocent-appearing
motor-car travelers. Further down the river we
found ranch houses being prepared for trouble by
having machine guns mounted on the roofs of build-
ings and by the posting of sentries. The trouble was
not only with the Mexicans who crossed the Rio
Grande, but also to some extent with the great popu-
lation of native Texas Mexicans, who vastly pre-
dominate in all the counties which border on the
Rio Grande. These people are mostly ignorant and
were easily led to believe through insidious propa-
ganda, that their motherland was powerful enough
to again gather Texas into its fold as one of its
provinces, a situation which existed previous to
1836, when the Mexican province of Texas revolted
and became the republic of Texas, which later, in
1845, joined the United States.
The Padre Typographers
A" ST. MICHAELS, ARIZONA, is located
a San Franciscan mission, in charge of four
padres, attended by a lay brother. This
mission has been established only a few years and
maintains chapels at three places on the Navaho
Indian reservation. Nearby is a Catholic Indian
school, maintained by Mother Katharine Dexel, and
attended by boys and girls from several Indian
tribes.
Father Berard and Father Weber of the mission,
have taken great pains in learning the Navaho lan-
guage, and have reduced it to printed form, an
enormously difficult task on account of the numerous
diphthongs and compound sounds of the language.
A person listening to the Navaho, and the affiliated
Apache language spoken by one of the tribe, would
be apt to describe it as a series of hisses and bitten-
off consonants that could get no further than the
teeth, labial sounds being conspicuous by their
paucity.
These painstaking, patient padres studied the
language for some years and devised special type to
represent some of the otherwise unprintable sounds.
By elimination they finally succeeded in bringing
out an alphabet which has only forty odd letters
and, after having fonts of type prepared from their
own patterns of those letters differing from or be-
ing additional to the English alphabet, proceeded to
erect their own printshop. Here were printed on
hand-and-foot power presses the first books in the
206
THE PADRE TYPOGRAPHERS
207
Navaho tongue. They were the cathecism and a
dictionary.
These constitute a real achievement and a monu-
ment to the devotion to a cause by these men of the
church. As their work had to be pursued by means
of private contributions, their enormous task was
accomplished in slow stages and with the greatest
self-abnegation. Among the most prized mementoes
of my travels is a copy of the cathecism in Navaho,
presented to me by the padres on my first trip into
the Navaho country.
The blending of the old and new. The first transcon-
tinental truck, at the ancient Pecos mission ruins in
New Mexico
Texas The Great
A A YOUNG man I lived for some ten years
in the state of Texas. After leaving the
state twenty-two years elapsed before I
again visited the scenes of my early youth, and what
a transformation had in the meantime taken place !
I doubt if any other state in the Union can show an
equal measure of growth and forward strides in a
steady march of progress.
In addition to being the biggest of our states in
point of area and cross-dimensions, it had grown
to be the greatest in many other respects. Thus I
found on the Gulf coast the greatest business farm
in the country, and probably in the world, the Taft
Farm, comprising some sixty thousand acres, all in
cultivation and divided into units of about two hun-
dred acres each, under the supervision of a respon-
sible manager and each having its substantial barn,
manager's dwelling and houses for the Mexican
laborers. In addition there are three good-sized
towns and a private packing plant on the property.
Diversified farming is pursued and a wonderful herd
of registered shorthorns is maintained. The prop-
erty is located near Corpus Christi and was seriously
damaged in the terrible tropical tornado which swept
over this region in the fall of 1919.
Near Kingville is the ranch of the King family.
This ranch contains about a million acres on which
are some eighty thousand head of Hereford or
White-face cattle. The home ranch is a veritable
mansion of white marble and would be a con-
spicuous estate in the Wheatley Hills of Long
208
TEXAS THE GREAT 209
When pathfinding one must of course not expect smooth
/7/1IW/7 nil ilia iimo
going all the time
Island, New York, where are located so many mag-
nificent homes of financial kings.
Not far away is the little town of Falfurias.
Here is located the hundred thousand acre property
called the Lasater dairy ranch. The largest herd of
registered Jersey cattle in the world is to be found
on this ranch. It comprises twenty-five hundred
registered animals, of which nine hundred are milch
cows kept in dairies, one hundred to each unit.
Prize-winning aristocrats of this particular breed of
bovines are here. Cows who have produced an
enormous weight of butter in pounds per annum,
bulls, heifers and calves, blue-ribboned and groomed
like race horses.
Down at Laredo, on the Rio Grande, is the
largest Bermuda onion farm in the country, the
Dodd farm. This comprises over five hundred acres
devoted exclusively to the raising of onions.
210
TEXAS THE GREAT
At Juno is located the Murrah ranch where
seventeen thousand Angora goats are making their
owner a fortune each year. Before the introduction
of these goats into that country, the land was dear
at twenty-five cents an acre, as it was arid ground
and over-grown by a species of cactus, the sutol. It
was discovered that this cactus, whose interior fibre,
near the roots, is like succulent cabbage leaves, is a
favorite food of the goats and the land values have
risen to five dollars an acre in that region.
Near Austin are located the largest spinach farms
in the world and also a large tract where mulberry
trees are grown for the successful culture of the silk
worm.
When Texas entered the Union of States, in
1845, it was stipulated that all public lands should
remain the property of the state and not, as in other
states, become the domain of the federal govern-
Our cars did not always cross Texas streams as easily
as a floating chip. No, not alivays
TEXAS THE GREAT
211
Visiting one of the Texas oilfields, the pathfinder's car
stopping at the location of the original spouter
ment. The proceeds from the sale of these millions
of acres of public lands have for years been devoted
to building and maintaining the finest system of
schools and educational institutions in the country,
and this wonderful work of placing the means of
an education at the disposal of and within the reach
of all its citizens is conspicuously evidenced by the
rapid transformation of a wild-and-woolly frontier
state to one of our most progressive and prosperous
commonwealths.
Texas is also our largest cotton producing state,
and has become the richest state of all in producing
oil fields. Its cattle industry is enormous, and even
its lumber industry is of vast dimensions. The
state is dotted with modern prosperous cities and
is fast building for itself a system of permanent
highways which will eventually prove one of its
most valuable assets.
A Tight Squeeze
THE road which now ascends from the Rio
Grande valley at Socorro, New Mexico, and
comprises part of the National Old Trails
Route through the Blue Canyon up to Magdalena
Plain, is of comparatively recent construction. The
first time I was investigating this route in that
locality we were compelled to make our way
through the narrow and steep Lemitar Canyon, a
few miles further north. At the time we were
traveling in a large truck and found at several
places that outjutting portions of the precipitous
cliffs which formed the walls of the canyon would
not allow for the passage of our large vehicle.
At times we were able to remove a few inches
of these projections by the use of a pick, and at other
times we were compelled to resort to the expediency
of piling rocks near the foot of the cliff, where a
projection occurred in order to tilt the top of the
truck away from the obstruction as we squeezed
through "by the skin of our teeth." However at
one place we encountered a situation that called for
a great amount of patience and arduous work. Pro-
jections occurred on the rocky walls on both sides
just opposite each other, and some ten feet above the
ground. The narrow space between these projec-
tions lacked a whole foot of allowing us space to
pass through. By standing on the front fenders and
pecking away at the hard granite boulders for sev-
eral hours, working the pick above our heads, we
eventually succeeded in getting through. It is
212
A TIGHT SQUEEZE
213
doubtful if any of us will ever forget the numb
arms and dizzy heads this work caused us, even
though we worked in relays.
In past years, bejore bridges and culverts crossed the
arroyos of New Mexico, pathfinding entailed many a
strenuous stunt in the effort to attain the other bank of
these steep and generally sandy ravines
APPENDIX
The Author wishes to express his deep
appreciation of the generous coopera-
tion of his friends whose announce-
ments appear on the following pages.
STUDEBAKER AUTOMOBILES
contain none but the finest ma-
terials, such as the best known
grades of steel, leather, upholstery,
finishing paints, tires and accessories.
Studebaker's reputation, maintained
throughout 68 years of business suc-
cess, precludes the building of cheap
cars or the making of substitutions
to lower costs.
STUDEBAKER
Detroit, Mich. South Bend, Ind.
Walkerville, Canada
Address all correspondence to South Bend
Mr.JTestgard, author of -Tales of a Pathfinder, ' secured 62, 000\miles from his 'NOBBY' Treads in 1914
^ the success of any
C^X tour depends
largely on tires that
give good dependable
service right up to the
end of the final mile.
United States Tires
are Good Tires
'Royal Cord' '.\obby' 'Chain'
'Usco' and 'Plain'
THERE'S A TOUCH OF TOMORROW
IN ALL COLE DOES TODAY
^ I 'HE economy of the cAero-
•*• EIGHT, its easy riding quali-
ties, its quick pickup, its tena-
cious road adherence and general
efnciency,inall,may be attributed
largely to the perfect balance
created by its aerotype construc-
tion. The car rides the road
with the same even keel that
the aeroplane maintains
in flight
COLE MOTOR CAR COMPANY
Creators cfcAdvanced ZMotor Q,ars
INDIANAPOLIS, U.S.A.
This is What a Skid Does !
It actually grinds away the tire's tread— stretches and weak-
ens the fabric— causes inevitable punctures and blowouts.
Every time you skid you grind off miles and miles of tire ser-
vice and no matter how careful a driver you may be, when
roads are wet and slippery it is next to impossible to avoid
skidding unless your tires are equipped with
Weed Anti-Skid Chains
For Protection and Preservation
Weed Chains insure safety, economy and tire protection—
Always put them on "At the First Drop of Rain."
AMERICAN CHAIN COMPANY, INC
BRIDGEPORT
CONNECTICUT
Largest Chain Manufacturers in the World
An Applied Ideal
"Every great enterprise is but the lengthened
shadow of a man." CJ Another way to say the
same thing is, "The quality of any product truly
reflects the character of the men who make that
product." CJ We accept that axiom on behalf of
the Reo product and of the Reo organization.
CJ Reo is one of the largest concerns in the motor
car industry. CJ But Reo has never been ambitious
to be the largest. CJ Reo never will contend for
that doubtful distinction. CJ From the very in-
ception of this concern it has been our ambition,
our purpose and our policy to build, not the most
— but the best. CJ It was resolved then that Reo
never would build more motor cars than we could
build and be sure that every Reo would be as good
as the best Reo that ever came from these plants.
CJ To that policy v, e have always rigidly adhered.
CJ Your approval of the Reo product — expressed in
the over-demand Reo motor cars and motor trucks
have always enjoyed — encourages us to believe that
you fully approve that policy. CJ Not the most,
but the best — the precept crystallized in the product
— the ideal practically applied. CJ In the beginning
of this, the seventeenth year of Reo, we thank you
most heartily for your patronage in the past; and
we assure you that, since the same executives will
continue to control Reo, the same policy will obtain.
Reo Motor Car Co., Lansing, Michigan
<5Xfe Most Beautiful Car in^merica
Hundreds of sportsmen have learned to include tlie
Paige motor car as a "standard equipment" when
planning their excursions back to nature.
They have found that the Paige is a splendid com-
panion on the trail — eager and willing to travel
wherever there is traction for four wheels — blessed
with the stamina that laughs at hard going.
This car, they have concluded, "belongs" to that
select little company of tried and proven thorough-
breds. It has all the flexibility of a finely balanced
casting rod — the power of an express rifle — the
speed of a Mallard — the aggressive, fighting spirit of
a three-pound brook trout.
And because of these attributes, the Paige is trusted
and respected as a fine mechanical product the
•world over.
PAIGE-DETROIT MOTOR CAR COMPANY
DETROIT, MICHIGAN
FROM coast to coast
—wherever men
travel in motor cars
you will find written
in the familiar pattern
of the Goodyear All
Weather Tread this
impressive story:
More people ride on
Goodyear Tires than
on any other kind.
34,000 Miles On One
o • c r^ * -. • a * 'i TH •
oet or rirestone uses
THIS photograph shows Mr. A. L.
Westgard in his car mounted on
Firestone Tires — the identical set
which gave 34,000 miles of service.
And such service! During Mr. West-
gard's "pathfinding" work of the past
15 years he has gone through the most
strenuous and hazardous tests of road
and trail.
Let his faith in Firestone tire building
and his experience with Firestone re-
sults be your guide.
^^^& ' " '^•tM^r^r
Tircstone
STCOTT
AUTOMOBILE construction becomes every
year more nearly standardized. But at
no time will ideals of quality become so
generally practiced but that the extra care and
forethought put into Westcott cars will show —
in the form of longer life and more solid satis-
faction during every year of that long life!
THE WESTCOTT MOTOR CAR COMPANY
Springfield, Ohio
IN REVIEWING
"Through the Land of Yesterday"
OUR GLORIOUS SOUTHWEST
By A. L. WESTGARD
JOHN % EUSTIS says:
"Whether one is a motor tourist or is primarily a student with an insati-
ate appetite for things historical, archaelogical, agricultural, industrial and so
on, A. L. Westgard's book, "Through the Land of Yesterday," will prove
of intrinsic interest and value. It deals specially with the Indian tribes of
our great Southwest, including not only those on the reservations but also
those of the twenty-six self-governing republics of the Pueblo tribes.
In his book Mr. Westgard produces a rare combination of practical
advice and suggestions for the traveler, especially the motor tourist, with
a wealth of information pertaining to a corner of this great country of
which little is known by a majority of our people.
Detailed within this book are accurate and interesting descriptions of
the houses, «tstoms, language, costumes, food, industries, history, tradi-
tions, pagan religion and sacred ceremonies of all the tribes. The climate,
physical character of country, scenery, prehistoric ruins, cave-dwellings,
gorgeous coloring, different races of people, desert vegetation, animal life,
living and petrified forests, mountains and plateaus, fishing, hunting and
camping.
After reading this book one need not be told that the author has had
perhaps an unequalled opportunity to study and to learn at first-hand his
subject.
Within its covers "Through the Land of Yesterday" contains material
that to secure otherwise one would have to virtually browse through an
entire library."
Endorsed officially by the Governors of Arizona and New Mexico.
Profusely illustrated with halftones, pen-and-ink sketches and
maps. Printed on fine paper and handsomely bound.
PRICE TWO DOLLARS
From your booksellei or direct from
A. L. WESTGARD »• *• 501 Fifth Avenue, NEW YORK
DISTINGUISHED "SERVICE
•Y_DTLLAC
D J CK
OAK1AH.D
r.P"r
GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION
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I-
OFFICIAL lAflAl MANUAL OF
MOTOR CAR CAMPING
A. L. WESTGARD
Field Representative
^Published by
AMERICAN AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION
Riggs Building, Washington, D. C.
501 Fifth Ave., New York
Contents
Introduction Camp Cooking
Car Equipment Breaking Camp
Camp Equipment The Medicine Kit
Camping Clothes Health Hints Worth Heeding
The Commissary Things Worth Knowing
Selecting the Camp Site Conclusion
Pitching Camp National Parks
The Camp Fire National Forests
Camp Sanitation State Game Regulations
ILLUSTRATED HANDY POCKET SIZE
Price to Non-members of A. A. A.
FIFTY CENTS
THE Silhouette is simply a frank ex-
pression of another Jordan ideal — a
determination to meet the demand for a
high-grade car, perfectly balanced, com-
fortable, economical, and yet light in weight,
compact, and with rare ability to perform.
After all, the building toward an ideal
has been the keynote of Jordan popularity.
Both men and women who have natural
appreciation for comfort, poise and atmo-
sphere, have found this Jordan Silhouette
irresistible in its symmetry of line and
beauty of color.
The chassis, of finished mechanical ex-
cellence, is the lightest on the road for its
wheelbase. This Silhouette weighs only
2,800 pounds. Its entire movement is for-
ward. No raqking sideway or continuous
bouncing so conspicuous in the cars of yes-
terday.
No wonder the Jordan has found such
instant favor among the motor wise.
JORDAN MOTOR CAR COMPANY, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio
•V
Do you want good roads
Do you want uniform laws
Do you want correct
touring information ?
Yourmtmbershipcourife,
American Automobile
Association
Washington, D. C., Riggs Building
New York, 501 Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street
°>^TlRE 3 WO
Supreme
FROM year to year, the greater
durability, comfort and econ-
omy of Goodrich Silvertown
Cord Tires have multiplied
their use, and intensified their
popularity.
It was the pioneer service of Silver-
towns, the original cord tires, that
raised the cord tire to its place of
honor.
Patricians in look, yeomen for work,
Silvertowns carry you to the su-
preme height of satisfaction.
The Creed of Goodrich
Whatever is right for a responsible manufacturer to give
the customer, The B. F. Goodrich Rubber Company gives.
To do what is right is not a Goodrich policy; it is The
Goodrich Creed. It is fundamental.
It is the foundation on which the great Goodrich institu-
tion has been built.
The Creed of Goodrich serves you, whether you buy a
sturdy, dependable Goodrich Fabric Tire, or the tire of
tires, the Silvertown Cord.
The GoodnchAdjustment Bast's: Fabric Tires,
6,000 Mites, Silvenoum Cords. 8000 Miles.
s
c
s
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
Los Angeles
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.
Fora
A 001238191
•MB
flffiTili
Old Man,
****** xmzwxTv: \*reat!
They stand up wonderfully in touring and
you can get them everywhere. These are
the reasons why I always use Michelins!"
MICHELIN TIRE CO., MILLTOWN, N. J
FACTORIES: Milllown, New Jersey — Clermont-Ferrand, France
London, England — Turin, Italy
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